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Old Wednesday, November 21, 2012
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WHAT IS DESCRIPTION?

1. Description tells what something or someone looks like.

a. As presented in the specimen example the writer uses and relies on sense impressions and figurative language to paint a word picture of the Jungle in Ecuador.

2. Before the judgments about the world, before the comparison or contrast or classification of experiences, one describes what he observes.

3. Scientists observe and describe whenever they conduct experiments, and one does the same thing whenever he writes a paper.

4. EXAPMLE: In a comparison-and-contrast essay, for example, you may describe the performance of two cars to show that one is superior to the other.

5. EXAMPLE: In an argumentative essay, you may describe a fish kill in a local river to show that factory pollution is a problem

6. Through description you introduce your view of the world to your readers.

7. If the readers are in agreement with your point of view than they will be most likely be sharing and accepting your conclusion and judgment.

8. Therefore, it is imperative to make yourself good in description, and know what it takes to describe an effective description.

9. Narration V/s Description:

a. A narration presents a series of events; it tells a story whereas a description tells what something looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like or tastes like. (Sensual Description.)

b. A narrative always presents events in time, in some sort of chronological order, whereas a description presents things in spatial rather temporal order.

10. Novelists, scientists and historians may portray by words the phenomena which they or we have never seen. (Imaginative Description.)

11. In a description, language is used to create a vivid impression to readers. That’s why the descriptive details are used in narrations as well.

12. In support of an implied or explicit thesis, one may use description.

a. Writers often use an implicit thesis when they describe a person, place or thing.

b. This technique allows them to convey the narrative’s descriptive impression2– the mood or quality that is emphasized in the piece of writing – subtly through the selection and arrangements of details.

c. Many writers use description to support an idea or assertion, however, many writers prefer to use an explicitly stated thesis.

d. This strategy eliminates ambiguity by letting readers see immediately what point the writer is making.

13. Whether the thesis is stated or implied, the details of your narrative essay must work together to create a single dominant impression.

14. In cases the thesis may simply be the statement of the dominant impression; sometimes, however, your thesis may go further and make a point about the dominant impression.

[Foot Notes: 1. The purpose of description is to re-create or visually present a person, place, event, or action so that the reader may picture that which is being described. Descriptive writing may be found in the other rhetorical modes.

2. Dominant impression in descriptive writing is the principal effect the author wishes to create for the audience.]

I. OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION

There are two basic approaches to description: objective and subjective.

1. OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION

A. In an objective description, the focus is on the object rather than on one’s personal reactions to it.

B. The purpose is to convey a literal picture of the subject.

C. Many writing situations require precise descriptions of apparatus or conditions, and in these cases the goal is to construct as accurate a picture as possible for the audience.

D. A biologist describing what he sees through a microscope and a historian describing a Civil War battlefield would both write objectively.

E. Newspaper reporters also try to achieve this camera-like objectivity, and so do writers of technical reports, scientific papers and certain types of business correspondence.

F. Indeed, objectivity is an ideal for which writers strive but never achieve.

G. Anytime writers select some details and eliminate others, they are not being completely objective.

H. Objectivity can be achieved to a level by giving all factual information to the readers which they need to visualize in the context.

2. SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION

A. Subjective or impressionistic description discloses your personal vision or your emotional responses to what you see and tries to get your readers to share them.

B. These responses are not necessarily expressed directly, through a straightforward statement of your opinion or perspective. Often they are revealed indirectly, through your choice of words and phrasing.

C. While describing a place or person, you could convey your subjective reaction to your topic by selecting and emphasizing details that show your feelings about the place or person.

D. A subjective or impressionistic description should convey not just a factual record of sights and sounds but also their meaning or significance. For example if you objectively described a fire, you might include its temperature, its duration, its dimensions. In addition, to these quantifiable details you might describe, as accurately as possible, the fire’s color, its movement, and its intensity. If you subjectively describe the fire, however, you will include more that these unbiased observations about it. Through your choice of language and your phrasing, you would try to re-create for your audience a sense of how the fire made you feel: your reactions to the crackling noise, to the dense smoke, to the sudden destruction.

1. Neither of the two approaches to description exists independently. Objective description almost always contains some subjective elements, and subjective description needs some objective elements to convey a sense of reality

2. The skillful writer adjusts the balance between objectivity and subjectivity to suit the topic, thesis, audience, purpose, and occasion of an essay.

II. OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE LANGUAGE

1. Both objective and subjective description depend on specific and concrete words to convey, as precisely as possible, a picture of the person, place, or thing that the observer is describing.

2. Both approaches however use different kinds of language.

OBJECTIVE

i. This description relies on precise, factual language that details your observation without including your attitude toward the subject.

ii. They describe things with words or phrases so unambiguous that many observers could agree that the descriptions were appropriate and exact.

SUBJECTIVE

i. This description, however, generally relies on richer and more suggestive language than objective descriptions.

ii. Subjective descriptions are more likely to rely on the commutations of words, their emotional associations than on their denotations, or dictionary definitions

iii. They may deliberately provoke the individual reader’s imagination with striking phrases or vivid comparisons.

3. Although both kinds of description may use comparisons to evoke a subject, subjective descriptions rely more on elaborate or imaginative comparisons.

4. When you write subjective descriptions, you can compare two similar things.

5. Instead of comparing two things that are alike, you can find similarities between things that are unlike and provide a fresh view of both. Such special comparisons are known as figures of speech. Three of the most common are simile, metaphor and personification.

A. A simile compares two things that unlike, using like or as. These comparisons occur frequently in everyday speech, for example, when someone claims to be “happy as a clam,” “free as a bird,” or “hungry as a bear.” As a rule, however, you should avoid these clinches in your writing. Effective writers constantly strive to use original similes.

B. A metaphor identifies two unlike things without using like or as. Instead of saying that something is like something else, a metaphor says that it is something else.

C. Personification endows animals or objects with the qualities of man beings. If you say that the wind whispered to, that the engine died, you are using personification.

6. Your purpose and audience determine whether you should use predominantly objective or subjective description.

7. Legal, medical, technical, business, and scientific writing assignments frequently require objective description, but even in these areas you may be encouraged to tailor your descriptions so that they develop your own interpretations and arguments.

8. Still in all these instances your purpose is primarily to give your audience factual information about your subject.

9. In contrast, an assignment that specifically asks for your reactions demands a subjective or impressionistic description.

10. To produce an effective description, however, you must do more than just say something is wonderful – you must picture it as wonderful to the reader.

III. SELECTION OF DETAIL

1. All good descriptive writing, whether objective or subjective, relies heavily on specific details that enable readers to visualize what you are describing.

2. Your aim in not simply to tell your readers what something looks like but to show them.

3. Every person, place and thing has its special characteristics, and you must use your powers of observation to detect them.

4. Concrete words must be selected for conveying your dominant impression that will enable readers to see, hear, taste, touch or smell what the author describes.

5. For Example: The example of showing “He looked angry.” “His face flushed and one corner of his mouth twitched as he tried to control his anger.”

6. In a given description, not all details are equally useful or desirable. Only those that contribute to the dominant impression the author wishes to create should be included.

7. The number of details used is less important than their quality and appropriateness.

8. To avoid a seemingly endless list of details that blur the focus of your essay, you must select and use only those details relevant to your purpose.

9. The level and knowledge of your audience also influence the kind of detail that you include.

10. For Example: A description of DNA molecule for first year college students VS for Junior Biology Majors.

STRUCTURING A DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY

1. When writing a descriptive essay, it begins with a brainstorming list of unorganized details, which you proceed to arrange in a way that supports your thesis and communicates your dominant impression.

2. For Example: The author may begin from a specific description of an object to a general description of other things around it or s/he can reverse this order.

3. The author can progress from the lease important feature to a more important feature until s/he finally focuses on the most important feature.

4. The progress can also be from the smallest to the largest item or from the least unusual to the most unusual detail.

5. The details of the description can be presented in a straightforward spatial order, moving from left to right or right to left, from top to bottom or bottom to top.

6. At final, you can also combine organizing schemes, using different schemes in different parts of the description.

7. The particular technique you choose depends on the dominant impression you want to convey, your thesis, and your purpose and audience.

I. Points for Special Attention

Objective Description:

1. In an objective description, subjectively describing the things is not appropriate. Instead of giving subjective reaction, the author must present the facts and give special attention towards the object. Sometimes simple details and conveying straightforward intention of and about thesis is well enough.

Objective Language:

1. The language is also dependent on the readers, what level they belong to. If the description is written for readers already having know-how about the particular thing, place or person, the language may be more direct and technical for there will not be pains for the author to explain things.

2. For Example: In a scientific descriptive essay written for science students, the language will be technical, as the example of the objective description of a microscope.

3. In objective descriptions, subjective language and elaborate figures of speech are not used.

4. The objective language is technical, factual and concrete, and concentrates on the size shape and composition of the specimen.

Structure:

1. For Example: In the essay about the description of a microscope, the author starts from the bottom of the microscope, with its largest part – the stand. He next directs the reader’s attention upward from the optic tube to the eyepiece and than downward. In the introduction, the author comments on the microscope’s purpose and general appearance; in his conclusion, he summarizes the microscope’s historical significance and briefly considers its future.

Selection of Detail:

1. For Example: The identification of readers who will read the essay is important for selecting the details of the objective essay. The level of readers, for example, in “The Light Microscope” is a group of well-educated nonscientists who know what a microscope looks like but that he would have to describe the individual components in detail.

II. Points for Special Attention

Subjective Description:

1. Vivid details are used. Using language the place is described and shown.

2. Using language in specific way helps the author to create dominant impression of the subject.

3. The language is specific, just like in the previous objective description, but this is used to create a different kind of dominant impression.

4. The thesis of the description, here, comes at the last paragraph.

Subjective language and Figures of Speech:

1. In “The Valley of Windmills” the author upon first introducing the windmills, questions about their reality. The questions rather her imaginative responses are all menacing connotations.

2. She, the author, personifies the windmills by describing them dark, evil, sneering figures with “arms hanging derelict.”

Structure:

1. The author’s purpose in writing this paper was to give the readers the sensation of actually being in the Valley of Windmills in Burma (Myanmar).

2. She uses and organizing scheme that takes readers along the road to Taungaleik, up into the Tennesserim Mountains, and finally to the pass where the windmills wait.

3. The details are described “According to her.”

4. Throughout her description she builds up her thesis, about the nature of life in Burma.

5. She withholds the explicit statement of her main point until her last paragraph, when readers have been fully prepared for it.
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