Blackwell Reference Online

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A topos is a line of argument that can be adapted to a variety of subjects and audiences. Since Aristotle's time, communicators have used lists of topoi to generate arguments relevant to their persuasive tasks (→  Argumentative Discourse ; Persuasion ). In addition to introducing the cultural topoi perspective, this entry describes a set of topoi that are widely used: cultural premises about the social world and how human relationships should be organized (see Leichty & Warner 2001 for a detailed description). Mary Douglas (1997) characterized culture as an accounting system (→  Culture: Definitions and Concepts ). “Think of culture as essentially a dialogue that allocates praise and blame. Then focus particularly on the blame” (1997, 129). The cultural system consists of five voices or competing “ways of life”: fatalism, egalitarianism, hierarchy, autonomous individualism, and competitive individualism ( Thompson et al. 1990 ). Each voice has a distinctive cultural topos that it uses in the competition of praising and blaming. The fatalist voice considers the world to be capricious and unpredictable. It is characteristically cynical and suspicious of the motives of others. It routinely disparages calls for collective action. The egalitarian voice privileges the value of social equality. It seeks consensus in decision-making in order to maintain group solidarity. Anything ... log in or subscribe to read full text