The Importance of Definitions

What is vocal modeling? How about vibrato? These are domain specific terms used for music, and teaching students how to sing. In order for a general audience to understand what an author is speaking about, it is important that domain specific terms are clearly defined. There are two types of definitions: 1- Formal definitions, which give a clinical, short, dictionary type of definition, and 2- Extended definitons, which are longer definitions, giving the essential nature of what it is by using the rhetorical tools of compare and contrast, description (visual, verbal, or written), process (step-by-step), and behaviorism examples.

 “Teaching Songs to Young Children: What Do Music-Teacher Educators Say?” by Diane Persellin is an article with domain specific vocabulary that is clearly defined for the audience. Two examples in the text include: 1-“the wholesong method, in which a song is repeated in its entirety several times until children are able to sing it on their own”, and 2- “the phrase-by-phrase method, in which the teacher divides a song into short phrases that the students echo”. These examples are formal definitions giving the reader a quick, clear-cut understanding of exactly what the methods are.

How to bake bread is an example of an extended definition. An author can give step-by-step guidelines on each ingredient required, how to prepare them to make dough, what type of dish to bake the dough in, what temperature to bake it at, and for how long. This definition increases the audience’s understanding and is called the process. This rhetorical tool provides the audience with a much larger amount of information than a formal definition and a clear understanding of exactly how to bake bread.

Knowing how and when to use each type of definition is important to the writing process. There are specific times that require a quick formal definition, for example, when trying to help the audience to understand an essay. Then, there are times that an extended definition is required, namely, when someone is trying to understand a concept as a whole.