Before you begin an argument, you must first figure our what your audience is thinking. You need to know their beliefs and values to know how to speak to them. The common sense of your audience is the beginning point of your argument. To shift people's point of view, you need to start from their position, not yours. This is known as spotting the common place. Common place is the viewpoint that your audience has in common. If you walked into a synagogue, then the common place between the audience would be that they all are Jewish. Therefore, you could not just start an argument by using science to back evolution, or else your audience would just shut you out. You would have to start out by talking about the Jewish religion and work it into your argument, and then talk about the science backing evolution. That way, you would have a much stronger chance of not losing your argument. Sometimes, the common place can be harder to spot. In most cases, your audience will continuously bring it up and try to talk about it. This is know as babbling, and is a great way to find an audience's commonplace.Another good common place spotter is rejection. When your audience turns you down, listen to the language it uses. Chances are, you will hear their common place. When you are sure that you know the audience's commonplace, try applying the common place label. To do this, simply apply the common place to some sort of ides, that way if anyone rejects it, they will seem like an outsider because it would be disagreeing with their common place.
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