English 106

Small Assignment 1 (SA 1)

SA 1 will be due at the beginning of class Thursday, Week 2

The initial focus of this course will be on the precise, careful, scientific use of language, which begins with a painstaking attention to detail and definition of terms. The selection of a particular word, particularly at a crucial juncture in an argument - in the thesis, for example, in the major claim, or in an inventive piece of support, or somewhere decisive in the conclusion - can quite literally make or break an entire essay. Your attention to detail, and the scrutiny of defining involved terms, begins with the question or prompt posed to you. For example, earlier this week I asked you to answer the question "Why are you here?" In that question the first three words are unambiguous, or clear, in their meaning. "Why" is a prompt for an explanation of causation. "Are" is an ontological signifier: it simply holds the place of being. "You" could potentially be interpreted as either the singular "you" - you yourself - or the plural "you" - you as in Purdue freshmen, my class, or any member of a larger group - but I assume, though without good reason, that most of you will also assume you meant you in the singular. The last word, for me, was the word to realize the entire question revolved around. "Here." Where is here? What did I mean by that? Here at Purdue? In English 106? West Lafayette? Indiana? The United States? Planet Earth? Is this an esoteric, philosophical question asking why you are alive as a human being? It could be any of these and more, depending on how you define a single term in what seemed an innocent question. Notice also, for this particular question, I never said to TYPE the answer, but to answer the question...

So, for your first Short Assignment, what I am going to ask you to do is, in no less than 2 and no more than 3 typed pages, define (This itself is a trick: are you certain what I mean by define yet? What does "define" mean? How does one do it?) ONE of the following three words (the choice is yours):

1: Writing

2: Thinking

3: Student