Paraphrase vs. Summary

Paraphrase vs. Summary Paraphrase vs. Summary Paraphrase vs. Summary By Maeve Maddox A reader asks for clarification of the difference between a paraphrase and a summary: I was in a large classroom with other teachers when the science teacher told the students to read a 2-page article and then to â€Å"paraphrase it [in] three sentences.† What the teacher should have said was to â€Å"summarize† the article in that length, whereas a paraphrase is not necessarily a shortening of an article but a rewording. The reader is correct. A summary is a brief summing up of the main points of a statement or narrative. A paraphrase is the rewording of something written or spoken, especially with the aim of making the sense clearer. A paraphrase may be longer, shorter, or of the same length as the original passage. I’ll give examples of each, using familiar sources. Summary of the film The Wizard of Oz (1939) When her Kansas farmhouse is swept up by a tornado and falls into an enchanted land called Oz, killing a witch, Dorothy Gale incurs the wrath of the dead witch’s sister. Befriended by a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion, she survives the witch’s attempts to kill her and succeeds in returning to her home in Kansas. Paraphrase of the â€Å"To be or not to be† soliloquy in Hamlet, Act III, scene 1. The question facing me is, â€Å"Should I go on living or kill myself?† Would it be more virtuous to put up with my problems or end them by suicide? Dying is like a final sleep, a sleep that puts an end to the troubles that living entails, a desirable final resolution to it all. But what if the sleep of death brings dreams? There’s the catch. Death may be scarier than life. That’s why a long life is a bad thing. Nobody would be willing to suffer all the pain and humiliation of living year after year knowing that he could be rid of it all with a dagger thrust. The only reason people don’t escape the misery of living by killing themselves is that they’re afraid the afterlife will be worse. Because we don’t know what happens after death, we choose to put up with our problems rather than face the unknown. Even if a person decides to kill himself, thinking about the unknown consequences makes him change his mind and go on living. Both skills, summary and paraphrase, are extremely useful. They do require practice. Related post: The Whys and Hows of Paraphrasing Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Synonyms for â€Å"Leader†Taser or Tazer? Tazing or Tasering?How Do You Determine Whether to Use Who or Whom?

Definition and Examples of Meaning in Linguistics

Definition and Examples of Meaning in Linguistics In semantics and pragmatics, meaning is the message conveyed by words, sentences, and symbols in a context. Also called  lexical meaning or semantic meaning. In The Evolution of Language (2010), W. Tecumseh Fitch points out that semantics is the branch of language study that consistently rubs shoulders with philosophy. This is because the study of meaning raises a host of deep problems that are the traditional stomping grounds for philosophers. Here are more examples of meaning from other writers on the subject: Word Meanings Word meanings are like stretchy pullovers, whose outline contour is visible, but whose detailed shape varies with use: The proper meaning of a word . . . is never something upon which the word sits like a gull on a stone; it is something over which the word hovers like a gull over a ships stern, noted one literary critic.(Jean Aitchison, The Language Web: The Power and Problem of Words. Cambridge University Press, 1997) Meaning in Sentences It may justly be urged that, properly speaking, what alone has meaning is a sentence. Of course, we can speak quite properly of, for example, looking up the meaning of a word in a dictionary. Nevertheless, it appears that the sense in which a word or phrase has a meaning is derivative from the sense in which a sentence has a meaning: to say a word or phrase has a meaning is to say that there are sentences in which it occurs which have meanings; and to know the meaning which the word or phrase has, is to know the meanings of sentences in which it occurs. All the dictionary can do when we look up the meaning of a word is to suggest aids to the understanding of sentences in which it occurs. Hence it appears correct to say that what has meaning in the primary sense is the sentence. (John L. Austin, The Meaning of a Word. Philosophical Papers, 3rd ed., edited by J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford University Press, 1990) Different Kinds of Meaning for Different Kinds of Words There cant be a single answer to the question Are meanings in the world or in the head? because the division of labor between sense and reference is very different for different kinds of words. With a word like this or that, the sense by itself is useless in picking out the referent; it all depends on what is in the environs at the time and place that a person utters it. . . . Linguists call them deictic terms . . .. Other examples are here, there, you, me, now, and then. At the other extreme are words that refer to whatever we say they mean when we stipulate their meanings in a system of rules. At least in theory, you dont have to go out into the world with your eyes peeled to know what a touchdown is, or a member of parliament, or a dollar, or an American citizen, or GO in Monopoly, because their meaning is laid down exactly by the rules and regulations of a game or system. These are sometimes called nominal kindskinds of things that are picked out only by how we decide to name the m. (Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought. Viking, 2007) Two Types of Meaning: Semantic and Pragmatic It has been generally assumed that we have to understand two types of meaning to understand what the speaker means by uttering a sentence. . . . A sentence expresses a more or less complete propositional content, which is semantic meaning, and extra pragmatic meaning comes from a particular context in which the sentence is uttered. (Etsuko Oishi, Semantic Meaning and Four Types of Speech Act. Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium, ed. P. Kà ¼hnlein et al. John Benjamins, 2003) Pronunciation: ME-ning Etymology From the Old English, to tell of