#COMFTF02

Composition
First Things First
The Example

(1) The basic building block of the expository paragraph and the expository essay
consists of the two part unit called the assertion and the support  or the thesis and the
example. We may understand this relationship with the following sets of patterns:

Generalization Abstraction Thesis

Specific Concrete Example Example

Assertion
Support

(2) Every basic unit of composition from the expository essay to the book focuses on
a generalization and a specific example.

Generalization: I feel sick today.

Specific example: I have a migraine headache and upset stomach.

Generalization: I had a miserable day at the free-throw line.

Specific example: I made only three baskets out of twenty-four
attempted.

Generalization: I had terrible luck fishing.

Specific example: After three hours from the boat and two hours
at the pier, I caught only one tiny Sunfish
too
small to eat.

(3) The abstract statement or generalization made in the thesis or topic sentence
leaves out enough specific details so that it could apply to a number of specific situations.
For example:

Paragraph Structure

(4) 1. The greater the speed, the less control the driver has over the car.

2. For example, a man driving at 30 miles an hour needs only 73 feet to bring
the car to a complete stop, but a man driving at 60 miles an hour needs 222
feet.
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(5) A standard expository paragraph consists of a thesis or topic sentence represented

as (1) TS follows by a specific example represented by (2) E.

Generalization Abstract
(1) TS

(2) E
Specifics Concrete

Thesis (Topic Sentence): East Texas has experienced a great deal of

precipitation in the last twenty-four
hours.
Example 1: Marshall has suffered baseball-sized hail.
Example 2: Longview has had over three feet of snow.
Example 3: Kilgore has reported thick pea-soup fog, allowing less than
six inches of visibility.
Example 4: Corsicana has had over twelve inches of rain, causing the
local creeks and rivers to overflow their
banks.
Example 5: Rusk has experienced driving sleet and ice, resulting in a
thirty car pile-up.

(6) Words ending in “tion,” “ment,” “dom,” “ness,” and “ity” are words of high
abstraction, meaning specific details have been left out. In the following examples,
another generalization or high-level abstraction requires specific concrete examples to
help the reader visualize.

Generalization: Fred has acted in a dishonest manner.

Specific Example 1: He claimed he gave $1,000 to his church when in
truth he didn’t give one cent.
Specific Example 2: He turned in a research paper claiming it was his
own work, when in truth he downloaded it
from the
Internet from an obscure Web Site.

(7) The term “abstract” comes from two Latin words:

ab (away from)
trahere (to pull or to carry)

(8) If I look around the classroom, I might find someone with blue eyes, a blue shirt,
a blue ink pen, a blue notebook, a pair of blue jeans, a blue color crayon, or a blue piece
of chalk, but I can’t ask anyone to go down to Eckerd’s and buy me a can or bottle of
blue  because blue is an abstraction  specific characteristics have been left out.
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(9) In expository writing, the examples have to be a great deal more specific than the
general thesis statement. In the following paragraph, the examples are just as general and
non-specific as the thesis statement.

Thesis: Mary acts like a brat.

Specific Example 1: She always does bad things.
Specific Example 2: She behaves like a delinquent.
Specific Example 3: She is a pain in the neck to her teachers.

(10) The problem we have is that the reader doesn’t have clue of an idea as to what
Mary did to earn the title “brat” or her behavior described as “brat-like.”

(11) The following example may help clarify the intent of the generalization:

Thesis: Mary behaves like a brat.

Specific Example 1: She squeezed Elmer’s Glue in the cat’s nose.
Specific Example 2: She mowed the shag rug with the power mower.
Specific Example 3: She crumbled broken glass in the sugar bowl
Specific Example 4: She flushed the goldfish down the toilet.

(12) The late Alfred Korzybski, the founder of General Semantics, has given us a
diagram or “scientific metaphor” to help us to understand the abstraction or abstracting
process. He calls it the “structural differential” because it helps us to differentiate levels
of abstraction (or levels of specificity). For one thing, it differentiates the word we use to
talk about things from the things themselves. The following components make up the
diagram:

(13) A parabola with the top broken off an into which we have drawn many small
holes, the number of holes appears infinite (or
indefinite). Breaking a piece of the parabola
makes it more manageable. With the use of
strings we have attached a smaller circle.

_______________________________________________________________

(14) Below the circle we have more geometric figures, each having fewer strings
than the
figures above.
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(15) Now let’s take the segments one by one, putting it back together when we have all
the pieces.

(16) The first figure, the parabola stands for everything that takes place outside of
our nervous systems or apart from our sensory
organs. It represents the world of atoms,
molecules, electrons, the world of rays, and
wavelengths, etc. The late J.S. Bois referred to
this parabola as W.I.G.O. or What Is Going On.

Non Verbal (17) The holes or circles Korzybski referred to

Level (or word) as “characteristics.” He preferred the non-
of Reality image evoking characteristics rather than
“atom” or “molecule” because the latter terms
have the tendency to put notions in our heads.

(18) The strings represent what our nervous systems (what our sensory organs)
abstract from the parabola. We represent the
nervous system or sensory organs by the circle.
The strings connect the characteristics from the
parabola (What Is Going On) to our nervous
system.

(19) The strings, though many, remind us that we

cannot possible abstract (pull from) everything
out in the W.I.G.O. (What Is Going
------------------------- On).

(20) The circle or object of perception has

Verbal Level many holes (but not an infinite or indefinite
(or word) of number of holes as the parabola does whose
Reality sides never end). Together, the parabola and
the circle, along with the strings, represent the
non-verbal world of reality (the region which
does not have words).

(21) The next figure on the diagram, looking like a laundry tag, represents the
first level of the verbal world of reality. This
figure represents the specific label or the
specific name such as “Phil” or “Doris.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - (22) We may make the statement “Here is

Specific Label Verbal Word Doris Smith” or “Doris Smith took
two wobbly
of Reality steps.”
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(23) The next level of abstraction in the verbal

Inference world of reality consists of the inference.
From the specific “naming” or “describing” on
the first level we make an inference, “Doris is a
bit tipsy” or “Doris is inebriated.”

Judgment (24) We could make another level of

abstraction (or generalization) and make the
judgment “Doris is a no-good immoral
woman.” Notice that the more levels of
abstraction we travel, the less probable and
“less visual” become the proclamations.

(25) From this structural differential the late S.I. Hayakawa constructed another
diagram called an “abstraction ladder” or perhaps a “level of specificity” ladder.
Although the two diagrams have similarities, they do have different purposes.
Hayakawa’s “ladder of abstraction” was designed to demonstrate levels of specificity in
expository writing. For this reason, Hayakawa made the levels go up on certain
representations of the diagram.

(26) His first classic example consisted of a cow by the name of Bessie.

Non-Verbal (27) Hayakawa suggested that the Bessie we

World of experience on the process level of reality
Reality consists of a “whirling dance of electrons” or a
“variegated mass of corpuscles” a process
starting with a union of sperm and ovum
progressing through calf, heifer, cow and
perhaps eventually a tray of ground up
hamburger.

(28) The Bessie we experience on the circle represents the actual cow we see at a
specific moment, the sounds she makes, the
shadows she makes and the specific shape we
see.
-------------------------
(29) “Bessie” represents the label given to the
Verbal Word cow.
of Reality Specific
Label
(30) The next figure, representing the term “cow” is an abstraction, leaving out
specific characteristics, differentiating “Bessie”
the cow from “Daisy” cow or “Suzie” cow or
perhaps Guernsey from Jersey from Holstein.
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(31) The next figure represents another level of abstracting representing the term
“livestock,” leaves out specific characteristics
differentiating cows from horses from
chickens. Notice the fewer strings and the
fewer holes.

(32) The next figure represents another level of abstraction. The term “farm
asset” leaves out specific characteristics,
differentiating cows from silos generating
plants or manure spreaders.

(33) The next figure represents another level of abstraction. The term “asset”
leaves out specific characteristics
differentiating cows from stocks and bonds or
oil wells.

(34) These levels of abstraction or specificity move to less specific and more inclusive
categories. Every word or term can be placed on a continuum of abstraction or
specificity like the following:

More Abstract
Less Concrete
Transportation Leaves out specific characteristics
differentiating Chevrolet Lumina
from
ship or plane.
Land Transportation Leaves out specific characteristics
differentiating Chevrolet Lumina
from trains, busses, and
trucks.
Automobile Leaves out specific characteristics,
differentiating Chevrolet Lumina
from Ford
Taurus or Cadillac.
Chevrolet Lumina Leaves out specific characteristics
differentiating gray Chevrolet
Lumina from
green, blue, red, or red Lumina.
Gray Chevrolet Lumina Leaves out specific characteristics
differentiating gray Chevrolet with
California tag GFS128 from
Texas tag LPN124.
Gray Chevrolet Lumina
with California Tag GFS128

More Concrete
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Less Abstract

(35) The standard expository paragraph consists of levels of abstraction or specificity,

beginning with a generalization thesis or topic sentence supported by specific examples
supported by even more specific details. The levels of specificity we could depict with
the following outline:

More General Thesis (or Topic Sentence)

Example 1:
Specific Detail 1
Specific Detail 2
Specific Detail 3

Example 2:
Specific Detail 1
Specific Detail 2
Specific Detail 3
More Concrete

(36) Mary Morain has constructed a diagram illustrating (without the parabola circle,
tags and strings) the levels of abstraction. The composition student can look at the top
portion of the diagram at the verbal level of reality to look at still another schematic
diagram of an expository paragraph with the generalizations followed by specifics in the
standard deductive expository paragraph and the specifics leading to generalizations in
the standard inductive expository paragraph.
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EXTENSIONAL-INTENSIONAL LEVELS OF ABSTRACTION

LEVELS OF ABSTRACTION1

I Generalizations D

N Judgments E

D V Assumptions INTENSIONAL D
E ORIENTATION
U R Opinions U
B
C A More Inferences C
L
T Inferences T

I Descriptions I

V Statistics EXTENSIONAL V
ORIENTATION
E Names E

____________

N
O Perception and
N Sensation

V
E
R Macroscopic
B
A
L Submicroscopic
 9

(37) Examine the following two lists of words:

A B
bread democracy
pencil love
sweater hate
land generosity

(38) Can anyone see a basic similarity in all of these words? We could conclude that
they all belong to the classification “noun.”

(39) Can anyone see a basic difference between the nouns in column A and the words
in column B? Column A words we can visualize, touch, smell, eat, etc., but column B
words refer to ideas, emotions, which we cannot feel, touch, taste smell, etc.

(40) We refer to the words in column A concrete nouns words which evoke sensory
impressions.

(41) Column B words, we refer to as abstract nounswords that leave out specific
sensory details. Procrastination, laziness, or anger cannot be bottled or boxed while
bread and pencil can.

(42) The terms concrete and abstract do not represent absolute mutually exclusive
categories. For example the term “bread” we consider more abstract than “wheat bread.”
“Wheat bread” we consider more abstract than “moldy piece of wheat bread lying on the
counter since Tuesday.” Words become relatively more abstract and concrete as we
delete or add specific details.

(43) S.I. Hayakawa, in his metaphor of the abstraction process (which he terms an
abstraction ladder) encourages students to move through levels of abstraction or
specificity.

(44) Taking the word “tea rose,” let’s move up the level of abstraction, leaving out
more and more specific details until the term becomes more inclusive but less precise.

MORE ABSTRACT MATTER ETC

ENTITY MATTER
ORGANIC MASS
GROWTH
ORGANISM
PLANT HOME
SAPIENS
FLOWER STUDENT
ROSE MALE
MORE CONCRETE TEA ROSE JOHNNY
SMITH
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(45) Now let’s move down the levels of abstraction to more specific and concrete
terms.

MORE ABSTRACT MINERAL LIVING THING

METAL INSECT
IRON FLY
HAMMERHEAD HORSE FLY ON
WINDOWPANE
MORE CONCRETE ETC. ETC.
(or specific)

(46) When we move up levels of abstraction, we leave out specific characteristics. As

we concretize, we add specific details.

MORE ABSTRACT TEA ROSE

A DEAD TEA ROSE
A DEAD TEA ROSE, USA
A DEAD TEA ROSE IN A PARK, USA
A DEAD TEA ROSE IN A TYLER PARK, USA
A DEAD TEA ROSE IN A HOTHOUSE IN A TYLER
PARK, USA
A DEAD TEA ROSE IN THE CALDWELL PARK
HOTHOUSE IN TYLER, TEXAS USA
MORE CONCRETE
SPECIFICS

JOHNNY SMITH IS A STUDENT

JOHNNY SMITH IS A STUDENT, USA
JOHNNY SMITH IS A TEXAS STUDENT, USA
JOHNNY SMITH IS A COLLEGE STUDENT, TYLER, TEXAS USA
JOHNNY SMITH ATTENDS TEXAS COLLEGE, TYLER, TEXAS USA
JOHNNY SMITH IS IN DR. MAAS’ ENGLISH 1 CLASS AT TEXAS
COLLEGE, TYLER, TEXAS USA

(47) Notice as we descend down the levels of abstraction, we get closer and closer to
the specific object. As we ascend the levels of abstraction, we leave out many specific
details.

(48) In expository writing, the writer illustrates his or her assertions by moving up and
down levels of abstraction and specificity.

(49) Let us read together this magazine article by Elaine Morgan on “The Murderous
Species.”
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The Murderous Species

by Elaine Morgan

Reprinted from The Descent of Woman (1972)

(01) Scores of books and articles have been written recently on [the problem of human
aggression], and the question usually posed is something like: Why has the species
Homo sapiens been cursed from its earliest beginnings with a propensity for murder and
violence unparalleled in the whole of the animal kingdom?
(02) Anthony Storr states clearly: “The somber fact is that we are the cruelest and
most ruthless species that has ever walked the earth.” And when his book On Human
Aggression went into paperback his publishers picked out this sentence to print in large
letters on the front cover, in the belief (justified, I don’t doubt) that this is the kind of
stuff people like to read about themselves.
(03) If you read these books and articles with close attention you will find they don’t
seem to be talking about the species as a whole. They are talking only about the
subsection Home sapiens. They are saying that human males are more aggressive than
the males of any other species.
(04) Suppose we try to define this allegation a little more closely. Is a man more
bloodthirsty than a shark? Or a piranha? Obviously not: so the claim probably refers
only to mammals. Is he fiercer than a wolverine? Is he more murderous than a rat? no,
he’s not. Perhaps the comparison had better be confined to primates. Speaking frankly,
then, which would you be more chary of annoying, a man or a gorilla? Or, if we
withdraw the gorilla because he’s bigger, compare the aggressiveness of a man with that
of some of the smaller primates for instance, the charming and cuddly-looking woolly
monkey of South America, who, if he takes offense, will hurtle from a treetop onto your
shoulders, get a stranglehold on your throat with his prehensile tail, and claw at your face
and eyes while hammering his sharp canine teeth repeatedly into the top of your skull.
How exactly has man become more maniacally aggressive than all of these?
(05) Or has he?
(06) Try a bit of fieldwork. Go out of your front door and try to spot some live
specimens of Homo sapiens in his natural habitat. it shouldn’t be difficult because the
species I protected by law and in no immediate danger of extinction. Observe closely the
behavior and interactions of the first twenty you encounter at random. Then, next time
you read a sonorous statement about man, try mentally replacing the collective noun by
the image of those twenty faces.
(07) “That window cleaner is one of the most sophisticated predators the world has
ever seen.”
(08) “The weapon is my grocer’s principal means of expression, and his only means of
resolving differences.”
(09) “The postman’s aggressive drive has acquired a paranoid potential because his
young remain dependent for a prolonged period.”
(10) You will instantly suspect that the writers are not thinking about people like that
at all, and that you have foolishly been watching the wrong species. But if you’re going
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to be any good as an ethnologist, you must learn to trust the evidence of your own senses
above that of the printed word and the television image. Remember, you have been
living among thousands of these large carnivores all your life, on more intimate terms
than those on which Jane Goodall lived among the chimpanzees or Phyllis Jay among the
langurs.
(11) Some observers, watching small bands of primates over periods of up to one
thousand hours, have carefully recorded the number of “agnostic encounters involving
physical contact” that took place per baboon-hour or per chimpanzee-hour. You are well
placed to compile a similar logbook dealing with the naked ape. If it more than six
months since you saw one of them fling himself on another and inflict grievous bodily
harm, then you are qualified to bring the good news from Ghent to Aix1 that as far as
uncontrollable aggressiveness is concerned, this species is nowhere in the top ten.
(12) You may say: “What about Vietnam?” This, of course, is why the statements
about man’s aggressiveness are so frequently whole. The writers are thinking about war.
War is a special case and . . . I want to make four points about it.
(13) 1. It is by no means an activity common to the whole species, or even to the
male half of it.
Most men have always lived and died without ever being involved in war. The
wars that dominate the history books were waged by a small mobile minority,
while the rest of the population carried on with plowing and milking and
making wheels and feeding the pigs. Even in the terrible years of the two
“world” wars, the overwhelming majority of extant males never at any time
destroyed another human life. This is not to minimize the horrors of war;
but lately men have been so obsessed by the experience of the last two
holocausts that they tend to write of war as an ineradicable species - specific
behavior pattern, or a biological imperative like breathing and eating, and this
is absurd.

(14) 2. Neither is it a “primitive heritage” we are trying vainly to outgrow In

most of the
remaining Stone Age cultures warfare is unknown. For instance, the African
Bushmen, as Marshall Sanlins has pointed out, “find the idea of war
incomprehensible.”

(15) 3. We are sometimes told that man is the only animal which has ever been
observed to behave
in this way, slaughtering its own kind. This isn’t true, either. Rats will fight and
kill not only rats of another species, but those from a different group of the
same species. And there was one terrible day in London Zoo when fighting
broke out among hamadryad baboons on Monkey Hill with such ferocity that
no keeper dared to intervene, and when it was over the battlefield was littered
with the maimed and dismembered bodies of the dying and the dead.

(16) Ethologists will quickly point out that animals behave in this way only
under unnatural and
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“pathological” conditions, and that the Monkey Hill debacle is now known to
have been due to human ignorance and mismanagement. I accept this
unreservedly. Only I would say the same about the Somme.2

(17) 4. If you had visited the Somme, and walked behind the lines among the
British and German
soldiers, and picked out twenty at random, and stuck electrodes on their temples
and measured their blood pressure and skin temperature and adrenaline level,
you wouldn’t have found them all seething with ungovernable hate and rage,
as those baboons undoubtedly were. you’d have found the window cleaner
and the grocer and the postman, cold and wet and fed up to the teeth and sick
for home. Something had gone badly wrong for those creatures or they
wouldn’t have been there; but it wasn’t a paranoid level of violence and
aggression.

_____________________________________
1
From the Robert Browning poem, “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aiz.” (Editors’s note)

2
River in northern France and the scene of violent battles in both world wars. (Editor’s note)
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Study Questions
for The Example

1. What generalization does Elaine Morgan make in paragraph one?

2. Does she follow her generalizations with a specific example in paragraph one?

3. Does she get more specific in paragraph 3, citing a particular example?

4. Does Elaine Morgan make an attempt to get more specific in paragraph 3, adding
some qualifiers?

5. Illustrate some specific examples she uses to refute Storr’s thesis in paragraph 4.

6. How is the example the “cuddly-looking woolly monkey of South America”

different from the other examples (shark, piranha, gorilla, rat, etc.)?

7. What point does Elaine Morgan make in paragraphs 7-9?

8. What method of investigation does she ask the reader to employ?

9. What significant insight does Elaine Morgan make in paragraph 11 about the
observing the behavior of primates?

10. What kind of a qualification (or level of specificity) does Morgan make in
paragraph 12?

11. Illustrate how Morgan adds more qualifiers to the “special case of war” in
paragraph 13.

12. Illustrate from one concrete specific example how Morgan torpedoes the notion
about a “primitive heritage” which we are trying vainly to outgrow.

13. What sentimental myth does Elaine Morgan deflate in paragraph #15?

14. What commentary about the “aggressiveness of human nature” does Morgan make
in paragraph 17?
15. What do the strings in the diagram remind us of? 04:19
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#COMFTF02
The Example
Example Essay Pre-writing

Profile: My Life and Goals

1. List ten adjectives which describe yourself with respect to your career.
Share the list with your group.

2. List ten adjectives which describe yourself in regard to your personal relationship
with family and friends. Share the list with your group.

3. List ten adjectives which describe yourself in regard to your personal development.
Share the list with your group.

4. What are your career goals? List ten; use your imagination. What would be the
ultimate successes in your career? Example: “I want to be the president of a large
university.” Share these goals with your group.

5. What goals do you have for yourself in regard to your relationships with family and
friends — maybe even with people you regard as enemies? List ten and remember
these are ideal successes, so be free in your selection of goals. Example: “I hope
to establish complete mutual trust with my parents.” Share these goals with your
group.

6. What goals do you have for your personal development? Again, these should be
ideals. List ten below in summary form. Example: “I want to be the best amateur
golfer in the city.” Share these goals with your group.
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Goal Essay

The third stop is to develop a real desire for the things you want from life.

Desire is based on a powerful emotion generated by crystallized thinking and vivid

imaging.

Desire can be tested exactly and accurately by answering these seven question:

1. What do I want? (Analyzed from previous procedure under goals.)

2. Where do I stand now?

3. What are the obstacles and road blocks? (What’s between me and what I want?)

4. How can I overcome these obstacles? (Plan)

5. Target dates for overcoming obstacle?

6. What are the rewards?

7. IS IT REALLY WORTH IT TO ME?

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Selected Study Questions

COMFTF-02

1. What is the basic building block of every expository paragraph and every expository
essay? 01:01
2. What is the most abstract or general part of the expository paragraph? 01:02
3. Illustrate a typical generalization + support example. 01:03
4. What do words which end in dom, ment and ,tion signify? 02:16
5. What is the etymology of the word abstract? 02:17
6. What is the basic difference between the examples in Paragraphs 9 and 11 on page 3?
03:09 and 11.
7. What is the purpose of the structural differential? 03:12
8.What are the first two geometric figures in this structural differential diagram? 03:14
9. What does the parabola stand for? 04:16
10. What do the holes on the diagram stand for? 04:17
11. What does the circle stand for on this diagram? 04:20
12.What region is represented by the parabola and circle? 04:20
13. What does the first laundry tag symbol stand for on this diagram? 04: 21,22
14. What does the second laundry tag symbol stand for on the diagram? 05:23
15. What does the third laundry tag symbol stand for on the diagram? 05:24
16. What was the purpose of Hayakawa’s ladder of abstraction? 05: 25
17. What does the parabola stand for on Hayakawa’s Ladder of Abstraction? 05:27
18. What does the circle stand for on Hayakawa’s Ladder of Abstraction? 05:28
19. What happens as we move from one laundry tag symbol to another in this diagram?
06:29-33.
20. Illustrate from the example in paragraph 34 that abstract and concrete are not absolute
categories.05:34.
21. What does Mary Morain’s diagram illustrate? 08:38
22. What is the difference between the words in Column A and column B in paragraph
37? 09:37
23. Illustrate that the terms concrete and abstract do not represent mutually exclusive
categories.09:42
24. Take the word “tea rose” and move it up and down the ladder of abstraction or
specificity. 09,10:45,46