Reconciling framing and stasis theory via the therapeutic topology of (dis)order.

Abstract

Despite their clear relationship, the Classical rhetorical concept of stasis (or status) and the more contemporary notion of ’framing’ have rarely been considered together, a situation that is made all the more surprising considering that the latter term can be argued as originating from a rhetorical context, namely, Kenneth Burke’s ”acceptance frames” (1937, p. 92). In this paper I seek to examine the similarities between stasis theory and the various ways in which the trope of framing has come to be instantiated in argumentation in the social sciences, the humanities, and select therapeutic modalities. While it is Goffman’s (1974) Frame Analysis that is usually provided as the origin point for the adoption of the concept of framing into common intellectual parlance, Goffman himself credited Gregory Bateson’s formulation of ”psychological frames” ([1955], 2000) as his source (Goffman, 1974, pp. 10 and 21). Consequently, in this paper, I will argue that it is the therapeutic-oriented work of Bateson (and its later development in Watzlawick, 1967, 1993, and Watzlawick et al, 2011) that represents the potential bridge between the current demotic understanding of framing, the introductory conceptualisation of Burke, and the Classical stasis tradition. The uncovering and exploration of the relationships between the traditions of stasis, Goffman’s frame analysis, Burke’s acceptance frames, and the Batesonian approach to therapeutic reframing, will allow us to re-position stasis at the heart of modern rhetorical theory and, furthermore, advance a therapeutic understanding of rhetoric that both reconnects it to its deepest past while also preparing it for its future place in an increasingly disordered (even (dis)eased) environment of public address and interpersonal communication.