A GENRE STUDY OF RHETORICAL MODES: DEFINITION
Read each of the following passages. In your writer’s notebook, identify what is being defined. Identify key words,
phrases, or sentences that demonstrate the use of definition. Make observation notes about how the use of definition
determines the organization and adds to the content of the passage.
PASSAGE 1: RESPONSE TO WRITER’S WAR BOARD DURING WORLD WAR II BY E.B. WHITE
Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in Don’t Shove. It is the
hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the
recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in
the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is the score at
the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.
It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the
middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.
PASSAGE 2: “I WANT A WIFE” BY JUDY BRADY
I want a wife who will take care of the details of my social life. When my wife and I are invited out by my friends, I want
a wife who will take care of the babysitting arrangements. When I meet people at school that I like and want to
entertain, I want a wife who will have the house clean, will prepare a special meal, serve it to me and my friends, and
not interrupt when I talk about the things that interest me and my friends. I want a wife who will have arranged that the
children are fed and ready for bed before my guests arrive so that the children do not bother us. I want a wife who takes
care of the needs of my guests so that they feel comfortable, who makes sure that they have an ashtray, that they are
passed the hors d’oeuvres, that they are offered a second helping of the food, that their wine glasses are replenished
when necessary, that their coffee is served to them as they like it. And I want a wife who knows that sometimes I need a
night out by myself.
PASSAGE 3: “ON EXCELLENCE” BY CYNTHIA OZICK
. . .I have always known that my mother’s life was a life of—intricately abashing word—excellence: insofar as excellence
means ripe generosity. She burgeoned, she proliferated; she was endlessly leafy and flowering. She wore red hats, and
called herself a Gypsy. In her girlhood she marched with the suffragettes and for Margaret Sanger and called herself a
Red. She made me laugh, she was so varied: like a tree on which lemons, pomegranates, and prickly pears absurdly all
hang together. She had the comedy of prodigality.
My own way is a thousand times more confined. I am a pinched perfectionist, the ultimate fruition of Miss Brubaker
[my high school English teacher]; I attend to crabbed minutiae and am self-trammeled through taking pains. I am a kind
of human snail, locked in and condemned by my own nature. The ancients believed that the moist track left by the snail
as it crept was the snail’s own essence, depleting its body little by little; the farther the snail toiled, the smaller it
became, until it finally rubbed itself out. This is how perfectionists are. Say to us Excellence, and we will show you how
we use up our substance and wear ourselves away, while making scarcely any progress at all . . .
My mother’s worldly and bountiful hand has escaped me. The sentence I am writing is my cabin and my shell,
compact, self-sufficient. It is the burnished horizon—a merciless planet where flawlessness is the single standard, where
even the inmost seams, however hidden from a laxer eye, must meet perfection. Here “excellence” is not strewn
casually from a tipped cornucopia, here disorder does not account for charm, here trifles rule like tyrants.
PASSAGE 4: “THE INSUFFICIENCY OF HONESTY” BY STEPHEN L. CARTER
Very well, let us consider this word “integrity.” Integrity is like the weather: everybody talks about it but nobody
knows what to do about it. Integrity is that stuff that we always want more of. Some say that we need to return to the
good old days when we had a lot more of it. Others say that we as a nation have never really had enough of it. Hardly
anybody stops to explain exactly what we mean by it, or how we know it is a good thing, or why everybody needs to
have the same amount of it. Indeed, the only trouble with integrity is that everybody who uses the word seems to mean
something slightly different.
For instance, when I refer to integrity, do I mean simply “honesty”? The answer is no; although honesty is a virtue of
importance, it is a different virtue from integrity. Let us, for simplicity, think of honesty as not lying; and let us further
accept Sissela Bok’s definition of a lie: “any intentionally deceptive message which is stated.” Plainly, one cannot have
integrity without being honest (although, as we shall see, the matter gets complicated), but one can certainly be honest
and yet have little integrity.
PASSAGE 5: “AMERICANIZATION IS TOUGH ON MACHO” BY ROSE DEL CASTILLO GUILBAULT”
What is macho? That depends which side of the border you come from.
Although it’s not unusual for words and expressions to lose their subtlety in translation, the negative connotations of
macho in this country are troublesome to Hispanics.
Take the newspaper descriptions of alleged mass murderer Ramon Salcido. That an insensitive, insanely jealous, harddrinking, violent Latin male is referred to as macho makes Hispanics cringe.
“Es muy macho,” the women in my family nod approvingly, describing a man they respect. But in the United States,
when women say, “He’s so macho,” it’s with disdain.
The Hispanic macho is manly, responsible, hardworking, a man in charge, a patriarch. A man who expresses strength
through silence. What the Yiddish language would call a mensch.
The American macho is a chauvinist, a brute, uncouth, selfish, loud, abrasive, capable of inflicting pain, and sexually
promiscuous.
Quintessential macho models in this country are Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Charles Bronson. In
their movies, they exude toughness, independence, masculinity. But a closer look reveals their machismo is really
violence masquerading as courage, sullenness disguised as silence and irresponsibility camouflaged as independence.
If the Hispanic ideal of macho were translated to American screen roles, they might be Jimmy Stewart, Sean Connery,
and Laurence Olivier.
In Spanish, macho ennobles Latin males. In English it devalues them. This pattern seems consistent with the conflicts
ethnic minority males experience in this country. Typically the cultural traits other societies value don’t translate as
desirable characteristics in America.
PASSAGE 6: “CLICHÉS” BY THEODORE M. BERNSTEIN
. . .The distinction here is somewhat akin to that between the coiner of a bright phrase and the mere echoer of that
phrase. It is the echoing that turns the phrase into a cliché—that is, an overworked, commonplace expression—and the
echoer should realize that he has no claim to originality.
This is not to say that all clichés should be avoided like, shall we say, the plague. It is no more possible—or desirable—
to do that than it is to abolish gravity. Many of today’s clichés are likely to be tomorrow’s standard English, just as many
of today’s standard words were yesterday’s metaphors: thunderstruck, astonish, cuckold, conclave, sanguine, and
thousands of others that form a substantial part of any dictionary. Moreover, the cliché is sometimes the most direct
way of expressing a thought. Think of the circumlocution that is avoided by saying that someone has a dog-in-themanger attitude. To attempt to write around a cliché will often lead to pompous obscurity. And for a writer to decide to
banish all clichés indiscriminately would be to hamstring—yes, hamstring—his efforts.