Composition
Abstract, Concrete,General,
and Specific Terms
Introduction
Language may
be our most powerful tool. We use it to understand our world through listening
and reading, and to communicate our own feelings, needs and desires through
speaking and writing. With strong language skills, we have a much better chance
of understanding and being understood, and of getting what we want and need
from those around us.
There are
many ways to label or classify language as we learn to better control it—by
levels, such as formal, informal, colloquial or slang; by tones, such as stiff,
pompous, conversational, friendly, direct, impersonal; even by functions, such
as noun, verb, adjective. I want to introduce you to a powerful way of
classifying language—by levels of abstraction or concreteness or generality or
specificity (any one of those four terms really implies the others).
Approaching
language in these terms is valuable because it helps us recognize what kinds of
language are more likely to be understood and what kinds are more likely to be
misunderstood. The more abstract or general your language is, the more unclear
and boring it will be. The more concrete and specific your language is, the
more clear and vivid it will be.
Let's look
at these different types of language.
Abstract and
Concrete Terms
Abstract
terms refer to
ideas or concepts; they have no physical referents.
[Stop right
here and reread that definition. Many readers will find it both vague and
boring. Even if you find it interesting, it may be hard to pin down the
meaning. To make the meaning of this abstract language clearer, we need some
examples.]
Examples of
abstract terms include love, success, freedom, good, moral, democracy,
and any -ism (chauvinism, Communism, feminism, racism, sexism). These
terms are fairly common and familiar, and because we recognize them we may
imagine that we understand them—but we really can't, because the meanings won't
stay still.
Take love
as an example. You've heard and used that word since you were three or four
years old. Does it mean to you now what it meant to you when you were five?
when you were ten? when you were fourteen (!)? I'm sure you'll share my
certainty that the word changes meaning when we marry, when we divorce, when we
have children, when we look back at lost parents or spouses or children. The
word stays the same, but the meaning keeps changing.
If I say,
"love is good," you'll probably assume that you understand, and be
inclined to agree with me. You may change your mind, though, if you realize I
mean that "prostitution should be legalized" [heck, love is good!].
How about freedom?
The word is familiar enough, but when I say, "I want freedom," what
am I talking about? divorce? self-employment? summer vacation? paid-off debts?
my own car? looser pants? The meaning of freedom won't stay still. Look
back at the other examples I gave you, and you'll see the same sorts of
problems.
Does this
mean we shouldn't use abstract terms? No—we need abstract terms. We need to
talk about ideas and concepts, and we need terms that represent them. But we
must understand how imprecise their meanings are, how easily they can be
differently understood, and how tiring and boring long chains of abstract terms
can be. Abstract terms are useful and necessary when we want to name ideas (as
we do in thesis statements and some paragraph topic sentences), but they're not
likely to make points clear or interesting by themselves.
Concrete
terms refer to
objects or events that are available to the senses. [This is directly opposite
to abstract terms, which name things that are not
available to the senses.] Examples of concrete terms include spoon, table,
velvet eye patch, nose ring, sinus mask, green, hot, walking. Because these
terms refer to objects or events we can see or hear or feel or taste or smell,
their meanings are pretty stable. If you ask me what I mean by the word spoon,
I can pick up a spoon and show it to you. [I can't pick up a freedom and
show it to you, or point to a small democracy crawling along a window
sill. I can measure sand and oxygen by weight and volume, but I can't collect a
pound of responsibility or a liter of moral outrage.]
While
abstract terms like love change meaning with time and circumstances,
concrete terms like spoon stay pretty much the same. Spoon and hot
and puppy mean pretty much the same to you now as they did when you were
four.
You may
think you understand and agree with me when I say, "We all want
success." But surely we don't all want the same things. Success means
different things to each of us, and you can't be sure of what I mean by that
abstract term. On the other hand, if I say "I want a gold Rolex on my
wrist and a Mercedes in my driveway," you know exactly what I mean (and
you know whether you want the same things or different things). Can you see
that concrete terms are clearer and more interesting than abstract terms?
If you were
a politician, you might prefer abstract terms to concrete terms. "We'll
direct all our considerable resources to satisfying the needs of our
constituents" sounds much better than "I'll spend $10 million of your
taxes on a new highway that will help my biggest campaign contributor."
But your goal as a writer is not to hide your real meanings, but to make them
clear, so you'll work to use fewer abstract terms and more concrete terms.
General and
Specific Terms
General
terms and specific terms are not opposites, as abstract and concrete terms are;
instead, they are the different ends of a range of terms. General terms
refer to groups; specific terms refer to individuals—but there's room in
between. Let's look at an example.
Furniture is a general term; it includes
within it many different items. If I ask you to form an image of furniture, it
won't be easy to do. Do you see a department store display room? a dining room?
an office? Even if you can produce a distinct image in your mind, how likely is
it that another reader will form a very similar image? Furniture is a concrete
term (it refers to something we can see and feel), but its meaning is still
hard to pin down, because the group is so large. Do you have positive or
negative feelings toward furniture? Again, it's hard to develop much of
a response, because the group represented by this general term is just too
large.
We can make
the group smaller with the less general term, chair. This is still
pretty general (that is, it still refers to a group rather than an individual),
but it's easier to picture a chair than it is to picture furniture.
Shift next
to rocking chair. Now the image is getting clearer, and it's easier to
form an attitude toward the thing. The images we form are likely to be fairly
similar, and we're all likely to have some similar associations (comfort,
relaxation, calm), so this less general or more specific term communicates more
clearly than the more general or less specific terms before it.
We can
become more and more specific. It can be a La-Z-Boy rocker-recliner. It
can be a green velvet La-Z-Boy rocker recliner. It can be a lime
green velvet La-Z-Boy rocker recliner with a cigarette burn on the left arm and
a crushed jelly doughnut pressed into the back edge of the seat cushion. By
the time we get to the last description, we have surely reached the individual,
a single chair. Note how easy it is to visualize this chair, and how much
attitude we can form about it.
The more you
rely on general terms, the more your writing is likely to be vague and dull. As
your language becomes more specific, though, your meanings become clearer and
your writing becomes more interesting.
Does this
mean you have to cram your writing with loads of detailed description? No.
First, you don't always need modifiers to identify an individual: Bill
Clinton and Mother Teresa are specifics; so are Bob's Camaro
and the wart on Zelda's chin. Second, not everything needs to be
individual: sometimes we need to know that Fred sat in a chair, but we don't
care what the chair looked like.
Summing Up
If you think
back to what you've just read, chances are you'll most easily remember and most
certainly understand the gold Rolex, the Mercedes, and the lime green La-Z-Boy
rocker-recliner. Their meanings are clear and they bring images with them (we
more easily recall things that are linked with a sense impression, which is why
it's easier to remember learning how to ride a bike or swim than it is to
remember learning about the causes of the Civil War).
We
experience the world first and most vividly through our senses. From the
beginning, we sense hot, cold, soft, rough, loud. Our early words are all
concrete: nose, hand, ear, cup, Mommy. We teach concrete terms: "Where's
baby's mouth?" "Where's baby's foot?"—not, "Where's baby's
democracy?" Why is it that we turn to abstractions and generalizations
when we write?
I think part
of it is that we're trying to offer ideas or conclusions. We've worked hard for
them, we're proud of them, they're what we want to share. After Mary tells you
that you're her best friend, you hear her tell Margaret that she really hates
you. Mrs. Warner promises to pay you extra for raking her lawn after cutting
it, but when you're finished she says it should be part of the original price,
and she won't give you the promised money. Your dad promises to pick you up at
four o'clock, but leaves you standing like a fool on the corner until after
six. Your boss promises you a promotion, then gives it instead to his boss's
nephew. From these and more specific experiences, you learn that you can't
always trust everybody. Do you tell your child those stories? More probably you
just tell your child, "You can't always trust everybody."
It took a
lot of concrete, specific experiences to teach you that lesson, but you try to
pass it on with a few general words. You may think you're doing it right,
giving your child the lesson without the hurt you went through. But the hurts
teach the lesson, not the general terms. "You can't always trust
everybody" may be a fine main idea for an essay or paragraph, and it may
be all that you want your child or your reader to grasp—but if you want to make
that lesson clear, you'll have to give your child or your reader the concrete,
specific experiences.
|
What
principles discussed on this page are at work in the following excerpt from
Jeff Bigger's essay, Searching for El Chapareke?
 HIS WAS THE DAY the canyon walls
of Cusarare, a Tarahumara Indian village tucked into the Sierra Madres of
Chihuahua in northern Mexico, bloomed with women in colorful skirts, legions
of children trailed by dogs, men in their white shirts and sombreros, all
cascading down the pencil-thin trails toward the plaza. The women — shifting
babies saddled on their backs in rebozos — sat in groups by the mission
walls, wordless for hours, drinking the weekly Coke, watching as the faithful
went to attend mass, young men shot hoops, and the older men hovered around
benches at the back of the plaza, waiting for the weekly outdoor meeting of
the community cooperative. Pigs wandered down the road in idle joy, and the
dogs fought on cue outside the small shop. |
You can check
out this principle in the textbooks you read and the lectures you listen to. If
you find yourself bored or confused, chances are you're getting generalizations
and abstractions. [This is almost inevitable—the purpose of the texts and the
teachers is to give you general principles!] You'll find your interest and your
understanding increase when the author or teacher starts offering specifics.
One of the most useful questions you can ask of an unclear presentation (including
your own) is, "Can you give me an example?"
Your writing
(whether it's in an essay, a letter, a memorandum, a report, an advertisement,
or a resume) will be clearer, more interesting, and better remembered if it is
dominated by concrete and specific terms, and if it keeps abstract and general
terms to a minimum. Go ahead and use abstract and general terms in your thesis
statement and your topic sentences. But make the development concrete and
specific.
A Final Note
Pointing Elsewhere
Sometimes
students think that this discussion of types of language is about vocabulary,
but it's not. You don't need a fancy vocabulary to come up with bent spoon
or limping dog or Mary told Margaret she hates me. It's not about
imagination, either. If you have reached any kind of a reasoned conclusion, you
must have had or read about or heard about relevant experiences. Finding
concrete specifics doesn't require a big vocabulary or a vivid imagination,
just the willingness to recall what you already know. If you really can't find
any examples or specifics to support your general conclusion, chances are you
don't really know what you're talking about (and we are all guilty of that more
than we care to admit).
Where do
these concrete specifics emerge in the writing process? You should gather
many concrete specifics in the prewriting steps of invention and discovery.
If you have many concrete specifics at hand before you organize or
draft, you're likely to think and write more easily and accurately. It's easier
to write well when you're closer to knowing what you're talking about.
You will
certainly come up with more concrete specifics as you draft, and more as you revise,
and maybe still more as you edit. But you'll be a better writer if you can
gather some concrete specifics at the very start.
After you
have read and thought about this material, you should have a fairly clear idea
of what concrete specifics are and why you want them. Your next step will be to
practice.
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