In this assignment, students write a short persuasive essay (3 paragraphs) on the topic of"Verbicide." You should be able to convince a reader to adopt your point of view by using clear reasoning and credible evidence. Remember to consider what your reader might they already believe, and how can you appeal to their values or logic. Be sure to present a clear thesis statement, support your argument with specific examples or data, and address at least one counterargument thoughtfully.

Comm10is An excerpt from "Verbicide" by David Orr Orr, D. (2011.) Verbicide. Hope is an imperative. Washington: Island Press, pp. 6-7. In the past 50 years, by one reckoning, the working vocabulary of the average 14 year-old experience. But it can also be used to indicate has declined from some 25,000 words to a general displeasure with the entire cosmos. 10,000 words. This is not merely a decline in Whatever the target, it is the linguistic numbers of words but in the capacity to think. equivalent of duct tape, useful for holding It also signifies that there has been a steep disparate thoughts in rough and temporary decline in the number of things that an proximity to some vague emotion of dislike. adolescent needs to know and to name in The problem is not confined to teen-agers or order to get by in an increasingly homogenized young adults. It is part of an epidemic of and urbanized consumer society. This is a incoherence evident in our public discourse, national tragedy virtually unnoticed in the street talk, movies, television, and music. "We media. It is no mere coincidence that in are all engaged," Abraham Heschel once wrote, roughly the same half century the average "in the process of liquidating the English person has come to recognize over 1000 language." We have all heard popular-music corporate logos, but can now recognize fewer lyrics that consisted mostly of pre-Neanderthal than 10 plants and animals native to his or her grunts. We have witnessed "conversation" on locality. TV talk shows that would have embarrassed intelligent four-year-olds. We have listened to The decline is surely not consistent across the politicians of national reputation proudly full range of language but concentrates in mangle logic and language in less than a those areas having to do with large issues such paragraph, although they can do it on a larger as philosophy, religion, public policy, and scale as well. nature. On the other hand, vocabulary has probably increased in areas having to do with The clear and artful use of language is, in fact, sex, violence, recreation, and consumption. As threatening to our consumer society. As a result we have highly distorted and atrophied a result we are losing the capacity to say what conversations about ultimate meanings, ethics, we really mean and ultimately to think about public purposes, or the means by which we what we mean. We are losing the capacity for live. Since we cannot expect to cope with articulate intelligence about the things that problems that we cannot name, one result of matter most. We have highly distorted and our misuse of language is a growing agenda of atrophied conversations about ultimate unsolved problems that cannot be adequately meanings, ethics, public purposes, or the described in words and metaphors derived means by which we live. from our own creations such as machines and computers. The words and metaphors derived "That sucks," for example, is a common way from our own creations, in other words, are for budding young scholars to announce their inadequate to describe the major flaws in these displeasure about any number of things that same creations. range across the spectrum of human