Stasis

According to Frank D'Angelo, "a stasis is the 1st conflict of two sides of a case [in our case, an argument] resulting from the rejection of an acquisition." In his book, Composition in the Classical Tradition, he links stasis as being closely related to the invention aspect of the writing process. "The Romans called it status or constitutio," and in Roman times, it was primarily defined as a legal argument; although, in earlier Grecian times, it was used "as a political term in Thucydides, it meant 'strife,' 'conflict,' 'faction,' and even 'civil war.'" (D'Angelo, 8). D'Angelo defines stasis as "the main point in a legal argument," which can take one of four forms:

1	Conjectural	Is it a dispute over a fact? (Did something happen?)
2	Definitional	Is it a dispute over a definition? (Allowing that something did happen, what was it?)
3	Qualitative	Is it a dispute over the value, quality, or nature of an act? (Acknowledging that both something happened and that it was a particular thing, what kind of a thing was it?)
4	Translative	Is it a dispute over moving the issue from one court or jurisdiction to another? (To whom is the defendant accountable?) (D'Angelo, 115)

In modern terms stasis is commonly referred to as a balance between two or more forces within an argument. Corbett and Eberly refer to stasis, at least initially, simply as question, or more to the point, five forms of a question regarding any particular issue:

1	Questions of conjecture	What happened? Does a shared reality exist?
2	Questions of definition	What should we call it?
3	Questions of cause or consequence	How did this come to happen? What will follow from it?
4	Questions of value	Is this good or bad? Is this functional? Is this just?
5	Questions of procedure or proposal	What should we do about this? (Corbett and Rosa, 17)

Posing stasis questions will provide the writer with points of entry into an argument. From any one of these points, the writer can then begin both internal and external reasoning about whatever cause one wishes to explore and/or defend. A critical reader can also use stasis questions to decipher what point of view the writer of the works under scrutiny has begun and/or posed his and/or her argument about the cause he and/or she is espousing. Stasis is an excellent way to, fairly quickly, get to the heart of the issue at hand.

Works Cited

Corbett, Edward. P. J., and Rosa A. Eberly. The Elements of Reasoning. 2nd ed., Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000.

D'Angelo, Frank J. Composition in the Classical Tradition. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000.