Introduction to Stasis Theory
2 Using Stasis Theory to Narrow Your Topic
by Stacie Draper Weatbrook
How We Situate Writing to Create Meaning
Many Salt Lake Community College English 1010 students are asked to write a paper that looks at multiple views in a debate in order to better understand the issue. Students are instructed to start with a research question with a potential for at least three answers/viewpoints. The aim of the paper is to venture beyond identifying simple pro/con viewpoints to exploring issues in their complexity. Understanding how to classify arguments made in a debate not only helps students narrow their topic but also allows for easier organization in researching and drafting.
Remember back when you were six and you were asked to clean up your toys? But that wasn’t the worst part. You weren’t allowed to simply stash the random Polly Pockets, Hot Wheels, Bionicles, Barbies, and Legos on just any shelf. You were tasked with the Herculean act of putting the toys where they belonged. It was enough to make you want to lie on the floor in despair, with Legos digging into your back to add to the dramatic effect.
Hopefully, some compassionate adult was there to show you the shelf for the dolls and Bionicles, the box for the Legos, and the bag to keep the Polly Pocket clothes out of the way of the vacuum. Today, as a college student, you can organize your dishes, spices, and socks as expertly as Martha Stewart. And you would too, if you weren’t working two jobs and going to school.
When you are given a research assignment, it can be just as overwhelming as cleaning your room was when you were six. You might feel the same loss of hope when you look at your digital mountains of database searches and Google results. Fortunately, research and research writing don’t have to be daunting, especially if you know how to mentally sort the information you find. As luck would have it, the ancient Greeks and Romans gave us shelves and bins to sort out debates and make complex information more manageable.
5 Types of Claims: Ways You Can Narrow Your Topic
Classical rhetoric identifies arguments by levels or “stases” (plural for “stasis”). The idea of stasis theory, as it is called, comes from traditional argument and issue exploration and helps writers start where their audience is to move through a logical flow of information.
When you research your topic, picture these five stases, or types of arguments, as shelves or bins to sort the issues about your topic:
FACT ― This level establishes what happens (happened) and verifies details in question.
DEFINITION ― This stasis seeks to classify and name an occurrence.
CAUSE & EFFECT ― This stasis shows the precursors and/or results of an issue.
VALUE ― This level argues how important, common, serious, or widespread an issue is.
POLICY ― This final level proposes an action or solution to an issue.
Choosing a stasis for your issue will help you narrow down your topic and keep your research question manageable. Many composition classes at Salt Lake Community College ask students to do a Viewpoint Synthesis or Issue Exploration essay that shows multiple views of an issue. Because the Viewpoint Synthesis or Issue Exploration is simply a summary of viewpoints and not an argumentative essay, you might choose any stasis as the focus of inquiry. It is not the assignment’s burden to resolve each stasis, but rather to report how others and you see the issue.
Keeping your topic narrow will help to avoid frustration as you sift through the digital piles of information for the Viewpoint Synthesis paper or any other research you’re assigned. In other words, you’re only asked to sort through the Legos, and then, only the Star Wars Legos.
Consider the following questions at each stasis and how they can lead to focused questions with multiple answers.
Fact
Arguments of fact must be questions where the “facts” are not easily agreed. A question like “What color is the Markosian Library?” or “How many people voted in the mid-term elections?” could easily be answered based on a quick look at the library’s exterior or research into the election data. These questions have answers that can be easily verifiable and are not considered viewpoints.
Many fact stasis questions deal with scientific or historical topics that lend themselves to varying interpretations and require verification, often showing a fundamental disagreement about what the reality is.
An example of a fact stasis question surrounds the human microbiome—the colonies of yeast, bacteria, and viral cells hosted in the human body. Consider the following fact stasis question and possible viewpoints:
Viewpoint 1) There are 10 microbial cells for every 1 human cell.
Viewpoint 2) There are actually 3 microbial cells for every 1 human cell.
Viewpoint 3) The ratio is actually 1.3 microbial cells for every 1 human cell.
When writing your Issue Exploration paper, you will include a summary of the issue where you state the different views. Later in the paper, you’ll expand and explain each of the views. Notice how the various views in this fact stasis debate can be summarized:
How many microbes are in the human body? For years, popular media and scientific journals reported that there are 10 times as many microbial cells in the human body as there are human cells. That number was the standard until 2014 when the American Academy of Microbiology stressed the number of both microbial and human cells were only estimates and the ratio of microbial-to-human cells were actually closer to 3:1 (Crew). In 2016, Ron Sender and a team of biologists used a population of standard 70-kg males to give a new estimate of 1.3 microbial cells to every 1 human cell.
The Viewpoint Synthesis/Issue Exploration paper would then go on to discuss the merits and limitations of each of the three viewpoints.
Definition
Definition arguments seek to classify an occurrence or condition. The definition stasis is used when there is some disagreement about what to call something (think Pluto being demoted from “planet” to “dwarf planet”). Definition arguments are also used in criminal court cases (X killed Y; was it View 1: self-defense; View 2: felony murder; or View 3: manslaughter?)
If you are researching bullying, you could use the definition stasis to seek to classify which behaviors should be considered bullying:
Viewpoint 1) Bullying is “a harmless rite of passage in childhood” and can be ignored.
Viewpoint 2) Bullying is any mean or rude behavior.
Viewpoint 3) Bullying is any behavior that employs an imbalance of power to control or harm others where the actions are repeated.
A summary of the issue and these viewpoints for the introduction to your Viewpoint Synthesis paper might look like this:
There’s been a lot of attention to bullying in the past years. Some people view bullying as simply a part of childhood. Psychiatrist William Copeland refers to a study by Arseneault, Bowes, and Shakoor who report childhood bullying is still “commonly viewed as just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up.” On the other side of the spectrum, acute awareness to bullying has given way to defining any rude, mean, or even contrary behavior toward another person as bullying. Other organizations like StopBullying.gov and child therapists like Signe Whitson define bullying specifically as any behavior that employs an imbalance of power to control or harm others where the actions are repeated.
The Issue Exploration paper would then go into detail about each of these definitions.
Sometimes, a third viewpoint is difficult to find. The reason might be that it’s sitting right in front of us as the accepted status quo and we don’t stop to recognize it’s such a common practice or belief that it isn’t given a second thought. Think back to the issue of how many cells make up a human microbiome. It took nearly 40 years for scientists to start questioning where the original estimate came from. As in the question on how to define bullying, one of the viewpoints is what most people traditionally thought about the issue generations ago, and, sadly, how that idea carries forward today. Questioning the status quo or commonly accepted ideas helps identify prevalent viewpoints and allows for other viewpoints to be considered and proposed.
Cause and Effect
Asking cause & effect questions helps narrow down a topic to the reasons behind and results surrounding an issue. Sometimes, asking cause & effect questions can be tricky, because they often produce a laundry list of causes or reasons for an issue rather than answers that are diametrically opposed. If we ask a cause-and-effect question like “what are the benefits of recycling?” we get a list of reasons: to conserve resources, to offset our carbon footprint, to feel good about ourselves, to have a zero-waste community, to save money. These reasons are not actual viewpoints, especially since all three reasons aren’t mutually exclusive; each of these reasons can exist happily with the other reasons, so the question isn’t likely to identify a real issue or debate.
When asking a cause & effect question—or any question for our Viewpoint Synthesis assignment—there must be at least two answers that are mutually exclusive, meaning they can’t exist together. Here’s an example:
Many people believe an effect of recycling is saving resources; however, John Tierney in his New York Times piece, “The Reign of Recycling,” says recycling plastics in many cases does not save resources because the power and water needed to recycle do not produce a net savings of resources. A third view of the effects of recycling is more about the effect of creating an awareness of consumption practices.
The above example takes a very small part of the recycling issue, whether recycling plastics saves resources, and identifies opposite viewpoints of the effects of the issue. This argument could also be very easily classified as a fact stasis question, since basic facts are in question. Either stasis you choose to call it, it’s important to see how a narrow question will yield a more specific discussion of the issue.
Value
Questions on the value stasis deal with how widespread, severe, pervasive, beneficial, or important an issue is. An example is a piece by Nellie Bowles called “A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley.” This article that appeared in The New York Times can be classified as a value stasis argument because it addresses how serious the issue of children’s screen use is to the parents creating the technology. Bowles reports that an increasing number of tech executives and programmers—the ones responsible for the apps and the devices to run them—are limiting and even forbidding screen time for their children. Here are the viewpoints presented:
Viewpoint 1) Any amount of screen time is absolutely harmful to children.
Viewpoint 2) Screen time isn’t a concern. Today’s screen time is similar to excessive television watching of previous decades and there are plenty of adults today who grew up watching a lot of television and turned out just fine.
Viewpoint 3) Screen time has advantages and drawbacks and should be used with careful purpose and be strictly monitored.
Bowles’ article is an excellent example of a real-life Viewpoint Synthesis assignment. Here’s how the views can be summed up:
How safe is screen time for children? Bowles quotes experts such as Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired and now the chief executive of a robotics and drone company, who says of screens and children’s brains, “On the scale between candy and crack cocaine, it’s closer to crack cocaine.” Another view, however, shows screens aren’t a concern. Bowles quotes Jason Toff, who ran the Vine and now works for Google, and lets his 3-year-old play on an iPad, which he believes is no better or worse than a book. Bowles also shows the middle ground of other Silicon Valley parents who say there are ways to allow some limited educational screen time.
A paper showing just how dangerous (or not) screen time is for children would go on to explain each of the views in detail, using sources in addition to the Bowles article.
Policy
Issues of policy answer the question what should be done? Suppose your workplace has a problem with workers not showing for their shifts. You decide to research that question and find the following solutions:
Viewpoint 1) Punish absenteeism. Decrease salaried workers’ pay for absences not cleared 48 hours in advance. Allow only X number of sick days. Write up non-salaried workers for missing shifts and give only one warning before terminating employment.
Viewpoint 2) Consider the causes of absenteeism and solve the problem by offering childcare and sick rooms for children of workers. Also, offer free bus passes or Uber credits.
Viewpoint 3) Focus on productivity not attendance. Abolish the attendance policy. Allow workers to take off any time they need as long as their work is done. For workers who must be present for customer-service work, offer bonuses instead of flexible schedules.
For our Viewpoint Synthesis/Issue Exploration assignment, you need three distinct views. The perspectives should offer views that cannot all co-exist. Notice how in the absenteeism example, Viewpoint 1 focuses on solving the problem punitively while Viewpoint 3 makes absenteeism a non-issue by focusing on productivity. These viewpoints are mutually exclusive and cannot both be implemented. Your task is to find at least two views for your own issue that are mutually exclusive. The third view could be the middle ground.
Note: Sometimes after identifying several potential policies, your topic may seem too broad. At this point, it may be helpful to focus your research question on only one of the solutions at the cause & effect stasis. For example:
Viewpoint 1) Yes, because _____.
Viewpoint 2) Yes, because of an entirely different reason.
Viewpoint 3) No, because _____.
Conclusion
Cleaning up your toys when you were six may not have been pleasant, but you can’t deny the exhilarating feeling of accomplishment once it was done. When you finally see how you’re going to organize your Issue Exploration, you’ll feel a similar sense of achievement. Being able to classify the type of arguments is pretty satisfying. Almost as satisfying as having all your Polly Pockets together on the same shelf.
A note to instructors and other interested parties: A quick Google search of stasis theory or a perusal of Purdue Owl will usually show four stases of arguments: Fact, Definition, Quality, and Policy. Another classification includes three stases: Fact, Value, and Policy. Because stasis theory is useful in narrowing and classifying topics, I prefer the divisions given by rhetoricians like Grant-Davie, Secor, and Fahnestock of dividing arguments into five stases.
Works Cited
Material in this chapter was adapted from the works listed below. The material was edited for tone, content, and localization.
Bowles, Nellie. “A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley.” The New York Times, 26 October 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-silicon-valley.html.
Copeland, William E., et al. “Adult Psychiatric Outcomes of Bullying and Being Bullied by Peers in Childhood and Adolescence.” JAMA Psychiatry, vol. 70, no. 4, Apr. 2013, pp. 419–426. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.504.
Crew, Bec. “Here’s How Many Cells in Your Body Aren’t Actually Human.” ScienceAlert.com, 11 Apr. 2018. www.sciencealert.com/how-many-bacteria-cells-outnumber-human-cells-microbiome-science.
Sender, Ron, et al. “Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body.” PLoS Biology, vol. 14, no. 8, Aug. 2016, pp. 1–14. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533.
Tierney, John. “The Reign of Recycling.” The New York Times, 3 October 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html.
“What is Bullying?” StopBullying.gov, www.stopbullying.gov/what-is-bullying/index.html.
Whitson, Signe. “Is it Rude, Is it Mean, or is it Bullying?” Psychology Today, 25 Nov. 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/passive-aggressive-diaries/201211/is-it-rude-is-it-mean-or-is-it-bullying.
See also:
Grant-Davie, Keith “Stasis Theory.” White paper. N.D. www.coursehero.com/file/27255076/Stasis-Theory-KGDpdf/.
Attributions
”Using Stasis Theory to Narrow Your Topic: A Lesson in Writing a Viewpoint Synthesis/Issue Exploration Paper and in Organizing Your Room” by Stacie Draper Weatbrook is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
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