ARCS Ch 4, Aristotle

While reading, I found the distinction between commonplaces and topics to be important and worth noting. Commonplaces represent the common cultural belief of the social construction available; topics represent the more traditional definition that is the point or category at which people are speaking about. Three common topics discussed by Aristotle were listed as; 1. Whether a thing has or hasn't occurred? Whether a thing will or will not occur? 2. Whether a thing is greater or smaller than another thing? 3. What is (and is not) possible?
These questions are interesting and are very helpful in directing your rhetorical analysis. It is obviously important to discover the stases at which your topic is held, and I feel that reading this - after last chapter which was all about questions - comes as a good follow up. Aristotle is similar to the type of rhetor that I feel I am in the fact that he uses and prefers logical proofs. I find these proofs to be very persuasive when arguing a topic. Finding the 'topic' of an argument is similar in many ways to the point of stases discussed in my last post. This is one thing I found confusing, how are these two things different? Common topics include those that many issues may disagree over, such as possible vs impossible, greater degree vs lesser degree, and past vs future. These are all common points in many current arguments where people are arguing about these points of stases.
Commonplaces have a way of inherently becoming ideologies in a culture (96). The point that many different members of a community seem to agree on a commonplace makes it an ideology in definition. Ideologies become a part of the culture, and although they may change they are enveloped in general by the culture that started them. From then on, the apparent ideologies are then influencing future ideas, speeches, and new ideologies by the vey fact that an ideology is seemingly engraved then into the culture. By becoming part of the commonly accepted culture it becomes an influencing factor in developing cultural norms and commonplaces.