Dictionary Abuse

I'm going to be blunt here. Very rarely is it appropriate to open an essay with a definition.

I'm talking about essays where the author says something like, “Merriam-Webster defines (insert term here) as...”. These statements almost never provide relevant context for the issue at hand, and frankly do more harm than good to your own argument. A lot of the reasons we write or argue something is to better understand it, but much of the time when this strategy is employed, it oversimplifies the term being used and broadens the essay's content in the process, while also suggesting the author is not familiar enough with the term itself, and the extent of their research capabilities is looking up a word in a dictionary. Or it suggests you don’t trust your audience’s knowledge and capabilities.

I believe there are a few reasons why students do this:

• First, and most frighteningly, they're taught to do it.
• Second, it's an easy way to do “research” and add another source to a bibliography.
• Third establishes how a specific term is going to be used.
• Fourth, they've seen it done elsewhere, especially in published works, suggesting this is an established and acceptable practice. However, in these published cases, rarely is it as simple as just quoting a definition.

The first two reasons need little explaining. The third and fourth, however, do warrant some explanation.

Sometimes, an author is using a common term in an uncommon way that may not be the first thing their readers will think of. In these situations the essay's thesis relies on a very specific, potentially specialized, unconventional definition. The thing here is your standard dictionaries tend to give the more general, conventional answers, those most people will already be familiar with. This is where using specialized definitions and resources can, however, come in handy. Different disciplines will use the same and similar words in different ways, and if a piece is aimed at an audience who may not share that specialization, defining the term is appropriate. However, these cases are rarely just definitions: they warrant more explanation and examples to help the nonspecialized audience.

The fourth one is a special case, especially because these sometimes pull definitions from several dictionaries. The point of these essays is to point out the problems these definitions have. In these situations, the purpose in bringing definitions into the essay is not to simply define the term but to show how the definitions disagree or leave holes. This then centers the entire essay on the issue of defining the term. It brings definitions together not to say “here’s what this term means,” but to say, “this term isn’t that simple.” In such a case, once you reach the end of the essay, you should be able to look back at the definitions quoted and see how and why they are incomplete or inadequate.

If your use of dictionary or encyclopedia entries doesn't fall into one of these two situations, then it's very likely you're doing more harm than good. Unless you need to define a term in a specialized or unfamiliar way or you’re finding issues with definitions, it’s better to trust your reader to already be familiar with whatever term you’re using. This can be particularly true in student essays where terms and concepts students should be exploring in detail, deconstructing, or should be applying, are merely defined. It’s kind of like summarizing a story or an article rather than analyzing it.

When providing a definition, it better be needed: the definition needs to be unconventional or one worth calling into question. If you find a definition you agree with and expect your reader will also, and if, by the end of the essay, you still agree with the definition and your reader should as well, then you're just wasting time and space.

Why call it a “requirement”?

The university I attended had very specific requirements for completing a Bachelor's degree in English: I had to take so many credits and certain classes as prerequisites to others. Among them was to take three literary history courses, each addressing a different historical period. For the sake of discussion, let's call one of these time periods Medieval Literature, and let's say I didn't take a Medieval Literature course. It doesn't matter if I didn't want to take it or couldn’t fit it into my schedule: I just never took it. And so, graduation time comes along. I've met every other requirement designated by the English Department for a Bachelor's degree except this one. I have the other historical periods, the theory courses, the research methods courses, the seminars, my general education courses, and all of it totaling the required number of credit hours needed for graduation.

So I go to fill out my forms for graduation, and this missing course comes up. What's the degree-granting department going to do? In a complex system, I've missed only one requirement among many. Will they then ignore this discrepancy and give me the degree?

Nope.

Why not? It's just one class.

Simple. I didn't do what I needed to do to earn it.*

Let's move closer to home then: the classroom assignments.

Most every assignment description has a list of requirements and many classes have a clause in the course syllabus stating all requirements must be met for an assignment to be accepted (and, depending on the class, an option to revise and resubmit). 

In composition courses, like those I teach, these requirements usually include:

• Length (word or page count)
• Research (number of type of sources) 
• Genre (the type of writing)
• Documentation (MLA, typeface, formatting). 

Depending on the assignment, there will be other requirements, like regarding thesis or organization. These aren’t sphinx like riddles to be deciphered to understand the true nature of the assignment: they’re clear statements of what the minimum expectations are.

Most students meet these requirements without too much trouble. So I'm flabbergasted when I receive essays that clearly miss these important requirements, and yes, sometimes a student has a hard time with a prompt or a genre, but when the assignment description says “3 page minimum” and 2 pages are turned in, or “MLA Format” and submissions are in Calibri 11 with inch and a quarter margins, or “Parenthetic Citations” and there are no citations whatsoever, the only assumption is the student has not paid attention to the requirements.

Requirement means it has to be done. Having so many pages or to have the essay written in a certain genre aren't just recommendations: they're requirements. They therefore, by definition, must be completed in order for the piece to be accepted. So, when assignments submissions don't meet the requirements, especially in college, they get 0’s.

That may sound heartless, but in a class with as few as a dozen or as many as a few hundred other students who did meet the assignment requirements, accepting something that didn't meet the requirements when everyone else did cheapens the effort of those that followed instructions. To accept two pages when three were required is to say the work and effort of those who turned in three pages was wasted. For me to do this would be to make me a hypocrite, and I'm not about to compromise my morals on behalf of someone who didn't take the class as seriously as the rest.

In short: If you want a degree, take the required classes. If you want to pass those classes, then finish the assignments as required.

*If anyone's interested, I did take courses that covered medieval literature for my Bachelor's and Master's degrees.

Graduated Organization

Here are two lists of movies produced by director Alfred Hitchcock.

1. Psycho
2. North By Northwest
3. Rebecca
4. Shadow of a Doubt
5. The Man Who Knew Too Much

1. North By Northwest
2. The Man Who Knew Too Much
3. Rebecca
4. Shadow of a Doubt
5. Psycho

Both lists have the same five movies on them, but are organized differently. It might be easy to assume one organizes them by release date (which is not the case), but what about the other? Either list could be entirely arbitrary, but that would leave them isolated when the goal of organization is to create unity and cohesion from one topic to another. It's even difficult to determine what relationship there is between the lists because some movies change position and others don't, while Psycho drops from the first to last.

Both lists are organized gradually, or by gradations: The first list is organized based on the aggregate user rating found on the Internet Movie Database (8.5, 8.4, 8.2, 8.0, 7.5), while the second list ranks them according to the AFI ranking of the lead actor appearing in the film (Cary Grant, 2; James Stewart 3; Laurence Olivier, 14; William Holden, 25; and Anthony Perkins who was not ranked).

Graduated Organization takes the elements in question and applies a criteria to them to create a relationship between the elements depending on the method applied. The methods are:

• General to Specific: Begins with basic, simple information easily understood and accepted by the audience, before moving to more complex information. Of course, the information addressed should be related to one another. In essence, this is developing ideas and making them more complex.
• Familiar to Unfamiliar: Even more reliant on audience, this focuses on how familiar, well known, or accepted the information is, and does not necessarily have anything to do with its complexity (a simple idea will likely be more familiar, but this will vary from case to case).
• Climactic: Considers the importance of the topics and addresses them accordingly: whatever is least important for your audience is addressed first, and each transition leads to a more significant topic until the most important is reached. By the time this climax is reached, its relationship to all other topics should be clear, as well as its importance.

While these seem simple enough, they can actually be complex because they tend to deal heavily with your audience's perception. While you should always consider your audience when writing, graduated methods, because they essentially rank your topics, need to take the audience into consideration: you want your audience to agree with your rankings, so you need to either frame your list in a way to be readily accepted by your audience, or adopt a perspective they will agree with. This is especially true because graduated methods are sometimes best used for introducing unfavorable or controversial issues gradually and by showing your audience what you're getting at isn't all that complex, nor difficult to believe or accept. Therefore, the theses in essays that employ graduated methods are more likely to be delayed.

What about placing the thesis early on? Doing so would invert the organization, changing them into Specific to General, Unfamiliar to Familiar, and Reverse Climactic. Technically, this is possible, and there may even be situations where a more direct, even shocking, approach might be useful. While there are instances where it is appropriate, and these methods can be inverted, doing so should be used with caution. It may be appealing to take this approach, but it should be handled with care because the most interesting parts of the essay are addressed early on.

The opposite problem is also a possibility: going too broad or vague. Each method ultimately points to a specific point, but gets there from some much less specific place. Because of this, it can be tempting to go too broad and general, in particular to fill space. The solution to this is audience: how far back does your audience need to be taken? The more familiar your audience is with your topic, the less distance you'll have to cover.

As for transitioning, it should identify the shift depending on the method. Climactic should indicate the move from less important to more important; General to Specific should indicate the information is becoming more specific; and familiar to unfamiliar, of course, will start with the more acceptable information. Without such transitions, the essay will appear disorganized because the relationship between the elements won't be clear, forcing the reader to wonder what the relationship is rather than focusing on the content of the essay, and all we really want to do in our writing is make sure our readers understand what we’re trying to say.