As a writer, your job isn’t only to create a content that is easy to ready and understand while still written in a professional manner. You have to ensure accuracy and reliability of everything you enter in your paper and the only way to do so is to understand the topic. For this purpose, you have to research – a lot. Personally, I love researching because that’s a great opportunity to learn something and it has been scientifically proven that researching can, actually, improve your problem-solving skills. With that being said, one of the most common problems writers and students have is not knowing where to start researching or what to do about it, this is particularly confusing when working in teams. Luckily, stasis theory can solve your problems and making your research easier. Throughout this post, I will explain stasis theory and teach you how to use it.
What is stasis theory?
Stasis theory is defined as a rhetorical procedure to determine the point of issue in a debate. The theory was established in ancient times by Aristotle or Hermagoras and was widely used by philosophers and rhetoricians in great civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome. These rhetoricians defined a series of questions whose primary purpose was to examine legal cases.
These questions have to be used in a certain order because the outcome of each new question depends on the preceding one. The stasis theory is extremely beneficial for research, teamwork, and overall essay writing process.
When employing stasis theory, famous essay writers investigate and try to determine:
- Conjecture (facts)
- Meaning or nature of the issue (definition)
- Seriousness of the issue (quality)
- Plan of action (policy).
It is important to use this exact order of stasis theory. All these categories can be divided into subcategories thus making the overall process easier. Below, you can see how you can divide stases into different questions for more efficient teamwork, research and writing process.
Fact
- Did something happen?
- What caused the event?
- Can it be changed? Etc.
Example: Climate change, does it exist? What caused it?
Definition
- What is the nature of issue/problem?
- What kind of the problem or issue it is?
- What are different parts of this problem and how they relate?
Example: Can climate change be defined as global warming or something else?
Quality
- Is it a good or bad thing?
- How severe is the problem?
- What are the consequences and who are the most affected people by this problem?
- What happens if problem isn’t solved?
- What happens if problem is solved successfully?
Example: Is climate change harmful? Who’s affected by it?
Policy
- Should action be taken?
- Who should be involved into problem-solving process?
- What should be done regarding this problem?
- What needs to happen to solve the problem?
As I’ve already mentioned, stasis theory is beneficial for essay writers and people who work in teams. Below, you can see how that works.
Example: Should we find a way to stop climate change?
Research
Stasis theory is an excellent way for writers to get more info about a certain subject in order to finish their work successfully. For example, when working on special topics, you can conduct a research using stasis theory because it acts as a series of analytical questions which help you collect precise information.
When you’re answering stasis questions, you should get information from variety of sources such as: interviews, polls, literature reviews, databases, journals etc. Stasis theory doesn’t only help you enter accurate info into your work, it also helps you explore given issue before forming an argument or thesis. Let’s say you get a complicated essay topic where you have to demonstrate your own argument regarding a certain subject. Before you, actually, get to that point, using stasis theory questions to investigate the topic will help you form an opinion.
Furthermore, questions from stasis theory can help you identify gaps in knowledge. If you are unable to answer one or more questions it means you have to do more research.
Teamwork
When working in a team, stasis theory helps multiple people find a common ground by generating and continuing a dialogue until consensus is reached.
Let’s take climate change for example and whether it’s solely caused by human mistreatment of the planet.
While some members of the team would agree that climate change was, indeed, caused by human error, others wouldn’t. Reaching stasis here would mean finding a common ground or something everyone would agree on.
Regardless of the opinion about human error or not, both groups would agree that climate change affects the entire planet (fact), that it’s endangering various animal species (fact), and they would also agree it’s a serious problem for all of us (quality).
Therefore, team members would achieve stasis in two out of four categories. They would agree over fact and quality, but they’d disagree about definition (whether it’s the problem caused by humans or problem that occurred due to some other factors) and policy (what can be done about it).
Even though your opinions can differ, stasis theory is there to help to develop a dialogue and create a well-written work. Without stasis theory, team members would probably argue and nobody would be happy about the given work.
Remember, when working in teams, even if some members don’t agree about a certain aspect, it’s always important to use arguments and develop the concept that everyone will accept. For instance, you can include various reasons why humans are to blame for climate change as well as why they aren’t primary culprits. That way, it is up to reader to take his/her side.
Stasis theory can be considered as guideline for research. Using questions that define each category will help you get informed about a topic, form your opinion, and write a paper that will contain reliable information. The theory is also beneficial for teamwork because it creates common ground in situations when two or more people have different opinions. Just ask the questions in the order I listed them and write down (or save) everything you find. When it comes to stasis theory, it’s important to think logically and explore a problem thoroughly.
