Student Essentials: Critical Thinking by Hills Debra

Author:Hills, Debra [Hills, Debra]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781844554928
Publisher: Crimson Publishing
Published: 2011-10-20T23:00:00+00:00

Discriminating definitions

Some words are not easy to define. Try these:

■ poverty

■ intelligence

■ masculinity.

Compare yours with the dictionary definitions. How similar were they?

Words like these are relative and can mean different things to different writers. Terms such as ‘intelligence’ may be contested even within a discipline – are you talking about abstract thought? Problem-solving? Emotional intelligence? Such words, therefore, need an explicit definition.

A good definition dispenses with ambiguity and tells the reader exactly where the writer is arguing from:

Masculinity in this sense can be defined as . . .

If a writer has defined a term unusually, be on guard, especially if they seem to have shaped the word to suit their argument. If the text is central to your argument, mention that the writer has used a singular definition. If it is background reading, treat the definition as contested.

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