1.) The word I am going to define is a new verb that is becoming popular among young people today, "to career."
2.) "career" the verb, as it is used today, means to do as well as you possibly could, or better than you ever had before. You can "career" anything: an exam, a girl, or a night of bowling. For example, "Man, I careered that exam. I have never gotten a 95 before!"
3.) The exigence for why I want to define this word is because when you think about it, there is no other verb that has the same meaning. The need to get this point across is very common, but there is no verb that fills the role
4.) My purpose for writing this paper is to argue that "career" should be a verb in the English language today. I think that it is a technically sound, commonly-used verb that isn't "slang." As my paper will prove, the verb "career" would fill a void in the English language that currently exists in my opinion. Try to take the example phrase in the second point (a very common type of phrase) and replace "careered" with another verb. You can't, and therefore I want to make this new verb official.
5.) I will be writing mostly to older, traditionalist English proponents who would be opposed to a new, "hip" verb like "career" to be adopted into formal English language. I believe they would be the ones the most against a new change, so my goal will be to explain/argue to them why it should be included.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ok Shane, this isn't a bad idea but what I am concerned about is the larger purpose of using this term. That is, why do we need a term like this? Also, what is its relation to the other uses of "career"? Does it say anything about society? Oswalts redefining of geek had a larger social implication that made the redefinition of geek worthwhile. Is there something like that here? Sure it doesn't have to be a grand reason but unfortunately just "I think this word is cool" doesn't make for a full essay. What is this void in our language that needs to be filled and why? Could you think about this some more and comment to this effect below?
ReplyDeleteI guess one way to look at it would be that society is so generated towards progress and high results that it took a word that used to just mean an occupation or job and turned it into a verb that means "best ever." I think I could talk about how societies emphasis on results (in business, sports, life, etc.) has changed this words meaning in the English language. I think we need a term like this because there is no other verb like it, as I attempted to point out in the proposal.
ReplyDeleteOk, yeah, that works. I just wanted some clarification to make sure you had a clear direction for the paper.
ReplyDelete