Discursive Writing

No insult is intended, but it’s true that many of us didn’t pay a lot of attention to grammar while in the elementary, middle and high school era of our lives. That’s not to say we were unable to learn it. What generally happened was that we were too bored by it and had a million other things that pulled our attention. Bad combo. It happened in others, just the same way, but their sour subject might have been math or science or physical education or–you get my drift. We were just kids!

Nevertheless, we had to learn the basics and that got us by. But now, uh oh! Article marketing! Here we are thinking about using writing to garner income! Hmmm…

You have options.      If you can afford it, outsource the writing. There are lots of folks willing to research and write for you. Check elance.com.

Writing 101:

But if you, like me, want to write your own original work, it’s behooves us to “study up” a little bit. So, let us begin:

First, there are four types of discursive writing. Each of these types has a distinct and easy structure, and once you know what sort of writing you are doing, the rest of the article almost writes itself. The four types of structure are: argument, explanation, definition, and description. So, as you think about writing your first paragraph, ask yourself, what sort of article are you writing. In this article, Discursive Writing – Pt. 1, for example, I am writing a descriptive article.

These are your choices of types of article or essay:

• Argument: convinces someone of something
• Explanation: tells why something happened instead of something else
• Definition: states what a word or concept means
• Description: identifies properties or qualities of things

An argument is a collection of sentences (known formally as ‘propositions’) intended to convince the reader that something is he case. Perhaps you want to convince people to take some action, to buy some product, to vote a certain way, or to believe a certain thing. The thing that you want to convince them to believe is the conclusion. In order to convince people, you need to offer one or more reasons. Those are the premises. So one type of article consists of premises leading to a conclusion, and that is how you would structure your first paragraph.

An explanation tells the reader why something is the case. It looks at some event or phenomenon, and shows the reader what sort of things led up to that event or phenomenon, what caused it to happen, why it came to be this way instead of some other way. An explanation, therefore, consists of three parts. First, you need to identify the thing being explained. Then, you need to identify the things that could have happened instead. And finally, you need to describe the conditions and principles that led to the one thing, and not the other, being the case. And so, if you are explaining something, this is how you would write your first paragraph.

A definition identifies the meaning of some word, phrase or concept. There are different ways to define something. You can define something using words and concepts you already know. Or you can define something by giving a name to something you can point to or describe. Or you can define something indirectly, by giving examples of telling stories. A definition always involves two parts: the word or concept being defined, and the set of sentences (or ‘propositions’) that do the defining. Whatever way you decide, this will be the structure of your article if you intend to define something.

Finally, a description provides information about some object, person, or state of affairs. It will consist of a series of related sentences. The sentences will each identify the object being defined, and then ascribe some property to that object. “The ball is red,” for example, were the ball is the object and ‘red’ is the property. Descriptions may be of ‘unary properties’ – like colour, shape, taste, and the like, or it may describe a relation between the object and one or more other objects.

Ok, Homework Time
Your assignment, should you decide to accept, is to take just one blog post or article you have written, and rewrite it in the 4 different discursive ways. You don’t have to complete a whole article. If you begin to understand after a few paragraphs, that’s fine. But at least try this. It will help cement the concepts of discursive writing into your brain. That’s one of the things you were supposed to learn in school, believe it or not.
 
 
 
 

Stumble it!