The Common Topics

This article needs more citations. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "The Common Topics" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In classical rhetoric, the Common Topics (koinoi topoi)were a short list of four traditional topics regarded as suitable to structure an argument.^{[citation needed]}

In Aristotle's Rhetoric, the common topics are discussed in Book II. They are generally considered to be heuristic.

Four traditional topics

1. Past Fact (Circumstance)
2. Possible/Impossible (Possibility)
3. Future Fact (Circumstance)
4. Greater/Lesser (Comparison)

Expanded list of topics

Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors expanded the list in their 1971 book Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student to include:

• Definition
  • genus / division / species
  • etymology
  • description
  • definition
  • example
  • synonyms
• Comparison
  • similarity
  • difference
  • degree
• Circumstance
  • cause and effect
  • timing
• Relationship
  • contraries
  • exclusion

• Testimony
  • statistics
  • maxims
  • law
  • precedents
  • personal example
  • historical example
  • authoritative quotes

See also

• Rhetoric (Aristotle)

References

External links

• Common Topics (course handout)