Defining Key Terms

Having a strong thesis is only the beginning of writing an excellent argumentative essay.  But having a map is no good unless you can read it; that is, readers need to be able to understand what going on in the thesis and arguments.  In order to make sure the reader can follow the thesis and argument, there are key terms that you’ll need to explain to them.

Generally, in your thesis, you will have used terms or phrases that roughly correspond to one of the following three categories:

(a) terms that most people would be familiar with and there is no (relevant) technical way in which prominent/relevant authors have used the term

(b) terms that most people would be familiar with but there is a technical way in which prominent/relevant authors use the term, and

(c) technical terms that most people are not familiar with

Here, I’ll provide some tips on what key terms to introduce and when to introduce them.

Common Terms

You should presenting your basic ideas in the thesis since that comes right at the front of your paper.  This will help clarify your main goals and help keep the big ideas in front of the reader.  It’s no surprise, then, that you’ll often has to use key ideas and phrases in presenting your thesis.  This is the first place where key terms will be very important, so we’ll look at some theses as our starting point, starting with the thesis example from the thesis section of this guide:

Thesis 4: “It is morally impermissible for hospitals to incentivize organ donations with financial compensation without regulation because creating a system that incentivizes the financially disadvantaged to sell their body parts will likely result in the exploitation of the poorest people in society.   The poor may be exploited by an unregulated market because financial pressures to cut costs may result in hospitals under compensating individuals who opt to sell their organs.”

In this thesis, there are many terms that fall under category (a) – terms that most people would be familiar with and there is no (relevant) technical way in which prominent/relevant authors have used the term.  These terms include “financial,” “sell,” “body parts,” etc.  Most of the terms or phrases in this thesis are ones which most people would be familiar with and there is no relevant technical way in which prominent/relevant authors have used these terms.  That’s probably how it will be for most of the theses you write.  With these terms, you (usually) do not need to define them explicitly or thoroughly.  You can assume readers know these terms and move on blissfully with your journey.

Common, but Sometimes Technical

But there are other terms in this thesis that fall under category (b) – terms that most people would be familiar with but have been used in technical way by prominent/relevant authors.  In particular, the term “exploitation” has been explicitly and carefully defined in the literature on the moral (im)permissibility of organ sales.  You should definitely take your time to carefully define these terms – those that fall under category (b) – early on in the paper.  However, you do not need to define them super carefully in the thesis itself because, since most people would be familiar with these terms, the reader can usually get a sense of what the argument is without having the technical definition of “exploitation” in mind.

One more quick note on terms and phrases that fall under category (b): a general rule of thumb for picking out what terms or phrases are common but have been used by the relevant authors in important ways is to see if they have been explicitly and carefully defined in the papers you’ve been reading.  Usually, authors in the assigned readings will explicitly and carefully define their terms.  If they spend a decent amount of space carefully and explicitly defining a term that you think is commonly understood, such as “exploitation,” then that’s a good reason to think you need to define it in your paper!  Again, these terms need not be defined directly in the thesis, but should be defined carefully very early on in the paper.

Introducing Technical Terms

Now, there are some terms that you almost never want to use in the thesis, namely terms that fall under category (c): technical terms that most people are not familiar with.  Generally, it’s not good to use these terms in the thesis.  I’ll repeat, because this is important: avoid using technical terms that most people would not be familiar with in the thesis!  Use synonyms for these technical terms that most people would understand and then define the technical term you want to use throughout the paper explicitly and carefully early on.  Most of the time you can get away with using more familiar terms as temporary fill-ins, even if they’re slightly imprecise.

Having said this, there are rare cases where you may have to use technical terms that most people are would not be familiar with.  The two most common cases of this are when you are using technical terms which may not obviously have a clear synonym that can serve as a suitable temporary fill-in or you are addressing the titles of specific views or.  Here’s an example of the first one:

Thesis 5: Many accounts of moral standing – that is, accounts of what individuals matter for their own sake – have failed to recognize that there can be differences in moral status – that is, the manner and strength to which they matter for their own sake.  In this paper, argue that there are differences among the moral status of merely potential people by defending the claim thatindividuals who would be persons,were they not prevented from normal development, have a moral status close to persons, and their moral status is much higher than those who merely might be persons – who have some degree of moral status – given those same conditions.

Notice that, in this case, the crucial terms moral standing and moral status are technical terms that most people would not be familiar with.  Yet, it’s also difficult to find straightforward synonyms for these crucial phrases.  But, since these phrases are crucial to the main claims of the paper, there must be some definition of these terms, even if the definition provided is a bit imprecise.  To do this, it’s good to have a parenthetical definition (highlighted in the above example) after the phrases that briefly describes what they mean.  This will keep your reader on track for understanding (at least roughly!) what you have in mind when you’re using these crucial claims.  These parenthetical definitions might be a little imprecise, but that’s OK.  Don’t worry too much about presenting slightly imprecise definitions (although don’t worry too little, either) in the thesis; you can go back and fill in what you mean in greater detail very early on in the paper.

The second case where it is sometimes OK to use these parenthetical definitions is when you’re addressing the title of a particular view.  Here’s an example of this case:

Thesis 6: In this paper, I will argue against a common attitude towards sex that Benatar (2001) has called the Casual View of Sex, the view that sex is a pleasure that is morally like any other pleasure and is constrained only by the sorts of moral constraints that follow all other pleasure-seeking activities.  The Casual View, I will argue, is wrong because it cannot explain why sexual infidelity is a particularly heinous type of promise breaking.  It cannot explain why sexual infidelity is particularly heinous because, if sex is, morally, just like any other pleasure, then sexual infidelity is no morally worse than other, more mundane types of promise breaking.

Notice that, in this case, the Casual View of Sex is crucial to the thesis but “the Casual View of Sex” is not a phrase that would be commonly recognized by most people (i.e., it falls under category (c)).  In order to state the thesis fully and reach the conclusion that the casual view is wrong, the reader first has to have some sense of what the casual view is.  So, since there is no obvious or easy replacement for the phrase “the Causal View of Sex,” it’s fine to include this technical phrase in the thesis and provide a parenthetical definition for it.

Exceptions to Introducing Key Terms Early

Up until this point, I have been deliberately simplifying my advice about when you should define these key phrases by only focusing on when you should define them parenthetically in the thesis itself.  But here I want to provide some more specific advice on when to introduce key terms outside of the thesis.  My (admittedly vague) advise so far has been to introduce them “very early on in the paper.”  That’s good advice, but it also oversimplifies.  Most of the time, you’ll want to introduce key terms in the beginning of the paper to clarify what was said in the thesis because that is when the terms are immediately relevant. 

But key terms or phrases crucial to the thesis may not always be immediately relevant.  There are some key terms or phrases that may not become relevant until later in the paper.  For example, you might want to consider an objection which introduces new technical terminology that most people wouldn’t be familiar with.  It would make little sense to define this term early on, since it won’t become relevant until the point of the paper when you address objections.  So, you’ll need to introduce key terms and phrases – mostly those that fall under categories (b) and (c) – as they become relevant to the argument.  If they are not yet relevant to the argument, do not introduce them!