Traditionally, has played a central role in how classical rhetoric defines, conducts, and structures both its subject matter and its methods.' The subjects of [rhetorical] deliberation, writes Aristotle, such as seem to present us with alternative possibilities (1357a). These alterative possibilities, structured as opposites, precede-as well as proceed from-the study of rhetoric. For example, stasis theory assumes that people find themselves opposed, actually or potentially, to other people in their interests, desires, and motives and that they require the means, or method, to clarify this opposition even as they seek to move beyond it toward consensus. To provide these means, stasis theory posits a heuristic set of categories-of Being, Quantity, Quality, Place, for example-designed to help disputants identify and evaluate the issues in any given case, chiefly by establishing the relative merit of the oppositions underpinning the contested issues: Only those cases whose points of conflict are sufficiently clear-i.e., are well formulated and resting on sufficiently common grounds-should go forward for debate and adjudication. Equally, opposition plays a key role in structuring the canons of rhetoric and, consequently, in structuring rhetoric as both a theoretical and a practical art. Within the canon of inventio, for example, we find appeals to the advantageous paired with the disadvantageous, possibility with impossibility, guilt with innocence, praise with blame; within dispositio, we find confirmatio paired with refutatio; within elocutio, we find a whole range of figures-from epanalepsis to antimetabole to isocolon-capable of pairing terms into stylistic antitheses; and, finally, within memoria and actiopronuntiatio, we find a spectrum of normative terms marked, at either extreme, by pairs such as natural and artificial, open and closed, high and low, and the like. Clearly, opposition is one of the key terms, if not a governing principle, of classical rhetorical theory and practice. But what of its role in contemporary rhetorical theory? In the critical analysis of visual, rather than verbal or written, texts? In images that seek identification rather than overt persuasion?

Technical documents implicitly require readers to play out textually constructed roles in order to create meanings. Good technical writers create texts that motivate their readers by emplotting them in an attractive fabula, and, especially, in a role that not only achieves the ostensible purposes of the documentation but also allows the reader to function as the hero in a narrative of progress and improvement. Drawing on reader-response criticism and narratology, this article shows how a particular instructional software manual, the VP-Expert™ guide, instructs and motivates readers by using devices which resemble the conventions of heroic narrative.

As Otto A. L. Dieter argues in his landmark essay, (1959), Greek concepts of motion provided classical rhetoricians with a theoretical framework for analyzing and conducting rational argument.' The various ways in which motion can be considered contrary, the different grounds on which contrary motions come to rest, the array of faults impeding contrary motions--all these distinctions, borrowed from the philosophic study of kinesis (movements) and metabolai (changes in Being), were applied by rhetoricians to describe and facilitate amphisbetesis, or the moving apart of opposing assertions. Stasis theory, then, provided a paradigm essential to the two phases of the rhetorical process: Noesis (Cogitation) and Poiesis (Production). This paradigm allowed the rhetorician to reflect upon--and upon reflection, to judge--whether a conflict of wills and a contest of assertions truly existed, and therefore, whether the matter under dispute was properly rhetorical. Likewise, the paradigm allowed him to anticipate the question to be resolved, the strategies of accusation or defense most likely to be adopted by the opponent, and consequently, the posture or strategy best suited to winning the dispute. If it is true that theories of classical rhetoric have survived because of their utility, then stasis theory has proven indispensable: for over 2000 years it has survived within the canon of rhetorical theory.2 Its most recent incarnation has taken place during the past four decades. Motivated first by historical interest, rhetorical scholars are now reconstituting stasis theory for much the same reason that prompted its formalization in the second century B.C.: the need to find an overarching paradigm that shapes the vast array of distinctions belonging to rhetorical theory into a practical system, one capable of identifying and resolving current communication problems.3