The section most interesting for me in this chapter The Common Topics and The Commonplaces was Commonplaces and Ideology. It especially drew my attention when the authors affirm that “an interesting feature of commonplaces, which are so basic to a mode of thought and behavior, [is] that the people who subscribe to them may remain unaware of their allegiance to them”. (129). It made me think a lot about the importance of trying to be aware of those ideologies that with such power affect our lives and actions. (130). Furthermore, I question myself how pertinent would it be to make our communities aware of them from an early age. Should schools teach their students how to be conscious and thus critical about ideologies?

In the project where I used to work back in Colombia, we used to work with schools interested in including critical reception of media as part of their curriculum. The idea was to teach children how to produce media (radio and/or video) so they could understand how the language of media worked and that the information could be presented and used in different ways depending on the objectives and interests of the people behind the product.

Throughout this chapter I kept connecting rhetoric and media. Especially when Crowley and Hawhee mention the example about president Bush’s declaration of war against Iraq in 1991. I was surprised with what they comment about the effects that speech had on people. It shows how powerful rhetoric can be when it uses and bases its arguments in ideologies. (130). Those ideologies that are part of our thoughts without us even noticing them. That is exactly what happens with the power of media. We often discuss and study the media’s pervasiveness but is it really the power of media itself that we are examining or is it the power of rhetoric used in the media?

Another, similarity that I found between rhetoric and media is the importance of kayros. It is a very important aspect underlying the whole theory about Rhetoric just as it is when producing media. “You cannot forget your audience!”, it is a maxim... The first thing you need to determine when producing media is who you are talking to, their beliefs, their ages, their geographical situation. So I wonder, What are the differences between rhetoric and media? Is it just the language in this case understood as “the formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures, or the like used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotion, etc” (dictionary.com)? Is the technology used to communicate?

Another connection that I made based on the discussion about commonplaces and ideologies was with Research Methods class yesterday. We were discussing the concept of paradigm. The third definition of the word paradigm in the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines it as "a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated”. Yesterday in class, the professor made us realize that when you do research within a specific paradigm of a discipline, the results of the analysis and interpretation of the data we collect may be completely different from those found if you observed and analysed the same date standing in a different paradigm. She suggested that as researchers we should seek to be aware of the principles of the paradigm from which we are observing, especially if we are trying to look at things from a different perspective and to contribute a new point of view on an issue. Again, the importance of being critical is stressed.

In this section as well, they comment extensively about the U.S. ideologies. I kept asking myself about Colombia’s ideologies as a country. I know for example that Catholicism has an important influence in our culture. We, as a country, seldom take responsibility for our own destiny. It is in God’s hands and we dedicate our time to pray and ask for better times in stead of thinking as the U.S. citizens would think “if you work hard enough, you’ll make a good living. If you are poor, you have only yourself to blame”. In our minds, God is either praising us or punishing us. However, as the authors affirm, commonplaces change (132) depending on historical circumstances, and Colombia may be moving from that ideology to a new one but I think this one still guides many of our attitudes and actions.

Finally, the last point I would like to comment which was not in this section but in the chapter, is that the authors keep telling us that through the usage of the techniques of invention a rhetor may find that the argument he/she is defending may not be the right one. I love when they say “Warning: through examination of an issue has been known to cause rhetors to change their minds.” Again, they remind us, while supporting the position they stated in the beginning of the book, that rhetoric is about citizenship, about thinking and giving priority to the common good of a community and not about feeding the ego of a rhetor by “winning” the argument. And, as I mentioned early, there are similarities with media. Media as well has a social responsibility building public opinion, procuring the transparency of the governments and societies and constructing democracy.