Definition:
A statement or type of composition intended to give information about (or an explanation of) an issue, subject, method, or idea. Compare with argument. See also:
- Ritual in Maya Angelou's Caged Bird
- A Definition of Pantomime, by Julian Barnes
- Cause & Effect in Stephen King's "Horror Movies"
- Getting Up on Cold Mornings, by Leigh Hunt
- Patriotism, by Alexis de Tocqueville
Etymology:
From the Latin, "to place"Examples and Observations:
- "People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind."
(William Butler Yeats) - "In other times, I could stand here and give this kind of exposition on the beliefs of the Democratic Party and that would be enough. But today that is not enough. People want more."
(Barbara Jordan) - "In exposition, every statement is offered as a matter of accepted fact. In argument, only some statements are offered as matters of fact, and these are given as reasons to make us believe assertions or claims."
(James A. W. Heffernan and John E. Lincoln, Writing: A College Handbook, 5th edition, W. W. Norton, 2000) - "One of the traditional classifications of discourse that has as a function to inform or to instruct or to present ideas and general truths objectively. Exposition uses all of the common organizational patterns such as definition, analysis, classification, cause and effect, etc. Alexander Bain is believed to have been the first to identify this mode of discourse in English Composition and Rhetoric (American edition, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1890)."
(Linda Woodson, "Exposition," A Handbook of Modern Rhetorical Terms, NCTE, 1979) - "Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself."
(John Searle)
Pronunciation: EKS-po-ZISH-un
