The Stases

The below are my notes on “The Status in Scientific and Literary Argument” by Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor

The stases are a way of organizing a rhetorical argument which take the form of questions. The questions constitute a taxonomy of arguments–they identify the parts of an argument, or if some are omitted, the kind or audience of the argument, as the case may be.

Suppose the topic of argument is food stamps. Then, the questions might take the following form:

• Definition: How can we define the object under consideration? What definition is suitable for the domain?
  • e.g., “What are they?”
  • e.g., “Who is eligible?”
• Fact: What facts are established about the subject.
  • e.g., “How extensive is their use?”
• Cause: Why has the subject come into consideration?
  • e.g., “What brought them about or what is their history?”
  • e.g., “What are their effects?”
• Value
  • e.g., “Are they a good or bad policy?”
• Policy
  • e.g., “Should they be continued, expanded, reduced, eliminated?”

The order of the questions is important. For example, questions of definition and fact must be answered before cause or value. But, the stases might not all be addressed in a piece of rhetorical writing. In academic writing, for example, it is common to address only a subset (maybe one) stasis, because it is expected that the audience often does not need cause or value, or some other stasis to be convinced of the argument.

In particular, (traditional) scientific writing might only address the first three stases because it is concerned with definitions, facts, and causes. In fact, the arguments posed in scientific literature might be only about the “right” definitions, and agreement on and measurement of facts. However that doesn't mean that the remaining stases are absent, but that they are implicit. In scientific writing, for example, the value argument is established already perhaps by the choice of audience (which is why you might submit a paper to a research conference and not a magazine), that is, the audience is expected to already be convinced of value.