Definition (or Redefinition) of a Concept or Term

Due dates:

• Proposal (250 words) with six sources: 6 February prior to class on the wiki
• Draft: 10 February, bring two copies to class
• Final version: 13 February, 11:59PM to the wiki

Length: 1000-1200 words (about 4 pages)

The need for definition arises when people have diverging ideas about what a term means or when an audience has difficulty understanding a concept. In addition, people often use definitions to achieve larger rhetorical purposes: if you accept all my definitions, I will most likely convince you of my point. In that sense, argument by definition is a very important rhetorical tactic. The purpose of this assignment is thus to teach you how define something--the nature of an activity, a kind of person, a condition, or a concept you know well--either in order to change an audience's thinking about the concept's meaning or to help an audience understand it better.

Assignment Objectives

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Your purpose in this assignment should be described by one of the two types of rhetorical situations described below:

a) You can change someone's mind about what a term or concept means. For example, your mother thinks feminism means one thing, but you think it means another: change her mind. Or your friends have a negative impression of the pro-life (or pro-choice ) movement: define the term in a way that will change their impression. Or members of your high school community think a university is a place of higher learning, and you want them to think of it as a business. Or most people think of a jock as one thing, but not you. Humanism; creationism; evolution; terrorism; freedom of speech; racism; conservative; natural; family values; politician; environmentalist; school choice; patriotism: all these are words that people may define differently than you. Enlarge their understanding.

b) You can define a term that is unclear to your audience, but which they have some need to understand. For instance, you might define the West Coast offense so that your boyfriend or girlfriend might better enjoy an upcoming football game. Or you (as a well informed scientist) might define a term like bio-luminescence or quark or fractal to a perplexed friend facing an exam. Or you could define gothic vision to prepare a friend for a visit to the Cloisters Museum in New York. Or you could take a term which your audience has only a vague notion of-- sea kayaking or hip-hop or liberal or urban sprawl --and pin down the meaning for someone who can profit from it. New words or foreign words or slang words might be a possibility. Or you could inform someone of the meaning of an ethnic or regional term--like shtick or Cincinnati chili .

Whatever your topic and audience, your presentation must include definitions of important terms in the controversy, history and background information, and a thorough explanation of all the different points of view on the issue.

Conceptualizing Your Task

Your invention process will include creating a thesis statement which puts the term or concept you are defining into a category. Example: "The contemporary university is still concerned with acquiring and developing learning, but more and more is also a business." That category may redefine the way your audience understands the subject or it may broaden and deepen their understanding. Your rhetorical situation--that is, what your audience knows and the nature of their need for this definition--will help you understand which parts of the thesis need the most development and support. You may use a variety of techniques to support your definition: synonyms, genus and differentia, description, narration, process, cause-effect, analysis of parts, examples, etymology, negative definition, and so forth. We'll discuss these tactics in class.

What form might your definition paper take? It could be a letter. It could be the script for a talk presented to a group of listeners. It could be posted on a web site or listserve. Or it could be a brief article for a specialty publication--a trade journal, hobby magazine, or pamphlet. Or it could be a memo to a person or the members of a particular group within an organization. In any case, it must have an exigence: for some reason, an audience is interested in your definition of this concept or term. What we want to avoid is the essay written for the "general audience" that could not appear in any imaginable place but an encyclopedia and which has no real reader in particular.

To do a credible job of informing and persuading your audience to consider new points of view, you will need to supplement and verify your information beyond personal knowledge and experience. Therefore, you will be required to consult a number of different kinds of sources in the library when submitting your initial proposal. This requirement is not meant to produce a high school research paper, but to make your invention process more sophisticated. What you learn about the issue in this process will help you in several ways: it will help you discover for whom this issue is a problem; it will help you decide on the rhetorical situation for which you write; and it will support your definition of the issue more fully.

Finally, remember that definition arguments DO NOT EVALUATE. This means that, for example, "defining" Joe Paterno as the best college football coach is in fact an evaluation masked as a definition. AVOID THESE SORTS OF ARGUMENTS FOR THIS PAPER.

Library Research for Definition Assignment

To gather evidence in support of your investigation, you must explore a borad range of opinions. Furthermore, you must research about the issue and the concepts/terms/ideas related to it. This evidence can be found in a variety of sources: in current periodicals, newspapers and websites; in quantitative form (such as statistical sources); or in the historical and retrospective format of books that may provide valuable background information.

For this assignment, you will indicate to me (the instructor) that you have surveyed the availability and usefulness of some potential literature to support your investigation. FYI: the sources you identify now may be useful for later assignments.

How to proceed:

1. Read PSU library website to see the different results you can obtain when you do an ADVANCED topic, author, or keyword search. Also, combine the terms and consider these more refined results.

2. Search several LIAS databases. Include the PSU catalogue as well as other on the "select" menu. You may wish to try the Humanities Abstracts, MLA, MUSE, ProQuest Direct (which also references newspaper sources), and JSTOR to begin.

3. Evaluate the citations (or abstracts) in each database as to their usefulness for your investigation.

4. Finally, when writing your paper I ask that you cite at least 6 resources; resources that wil help you further and/or bolster your argument. Append a "Work Referenced" section to the end of your paper, following MLA citation style.

Need further help? Our library employs MANY qualified research librarians who will be able to point you in the most useful directions.