English 1301—Paper # 3

Definition

For your third paper, write an extended definition of some term or phenomenon of interest to your chosen theme or topic (such topic-theme-substance as you took on with your analysis and leading up to your argumentative paper). In writing an extended definition, you strive to do that which cannot be accomplished in a brief definition: to flesh out, making vivid and concrete, that term or phenomenon which you have chosen to define—through example and anecdote, through narrative, through compare-and-contrast, through process analysis, through cause and effect, or through whatever means necessary to accomplish the task. In choosing what to define, try to determine what term or terms require precise clarification for the sake of that argument you are to present in Paper # 4 (an argument pertaining to anthropogenic climate change, for example, might benefit from extended definition of greenhouse effect, CO2 cycle, methane-burp, glaciers, ice-cap melting, ocean acidification, or any number of other terms and concepts; or an argument over some aspect of educational institutions might benefit from extended definition of education, assessment, learning, electronic media, behavioral conditioning, developmental psychology, bureaucracy, corporatism, citizenship or consumerism). In writing this essay, please give careful consideration to the following:

• Meanings (have you thought out and delved into your subject from every conceivable angle, discovering meanings both obvious and not-so-obvious?)
• Patterns of Development (have you fully employed an appropriate range of methods to develop your subject—from analysis to persuasive and every appropriate pattern in between?)
• Thesis (have you focused your definition on a clearly identifiable thesis, maintaining reasonably clear boundaries around your subject?)
• Evidence (is your definition developed with sufficient examples, anecdotes, and concrete details to both clearly identify your subject and make it vivid to your readers?)

Follow the writing process in all of its essentials. Leave yourself ample time for drafting, revision, editing, and the production of a final draft of 1200-1500 words, double-spaced and in 12 point font (Courier or Times New Roman). For this paper, you must use a minimum of three sources, chosen from periodicals and books only, documented within your text and in a works cited page according to MLA standards. For other essentials, please refer to your course information sheet, as well as to relevant sections of The Little Seagull Handbook or other reference resources. Please submit unstapled in a pocketed folder together with an informal outline and marked copies of all previously submitted papers.

Due Date: See Calendar

Paper # 3
Addendum
(These are options)

• Analyze any reading not on the calendar, including of your own selection, in resonance or comparison with—in comparative light of—Jeremy Rifkin’s “The Efficient Society,” Neil Postman’s “Future Schlock,” and/or Benjamin Barber’s “America Skips School.”
• Extend Jeremy Rifkin’s definition of the efficient society into the contemporary work place, or into the contemporary world at large, (or into “your world”) in its most pronounced or extreme aspects.
• Elaborate Benjamin Barber’s critique of our K-12 educational institution in comparative light of, in juxtaposition with—as a narrowing of—“The Efficient Society” as Jeremy Rifkin defines it.
• Elaborate Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” as a satirical treatment of the “efficient society” as Jeremy Rifkin essentially defines it.
• Define any totalitarian state, or any particular instance of oppression or genocide, as an evolution of Frederick Taylor’s efficiency paradigm such as it was implemented in the industrial workplace about a century ago.
• Define political, economic, social, psychological, and/or spiritual entropy as understood by such authors as Loren Eiseley, K.C. Cole, Neil Postman, Benjamin Barber, Jeremy Rifkin, Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Jonathan Swift, or others—including in such definition the antidote to entropy as envisioned or implied by these same seminal authors.
• Articulate that definition of conformity as moral and spiritual failure, as developed in the writing of Henry David Thoreau, George Orwell, Martin Luther King, Stanley Milgram, Hannah Arendt, Jonathan Swift and/or others.
• Define non-violence in the Thoreau-Tolstoy-Gandhi-MLK paradigm or thought-continuum—considered as well in light of the writings of Helen Keller, General Smedley Butler, Henry David Thoreau, George Orwell, Jonathan Swift, Martin Luther King and/or others.
• Define perpetual war for perpetual peace, or war machinery (military-industrial complex) in its essential aspects according to James Madison, Gore Vidal, Helen Keller, General Smedley Butler, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Jonathan Swift, Martin Luther King and/or others.