Description and the Senses. Social Sciences Essay Paper

In your first assignment for this course, you were asked to reframe a perspective - an exercise designed to hone critical thinking while empowering you to think more flexibly, using writing as a means of thinking about a problem and potentially resolving it. Now we are ready to hone your skills of observation and description. This assignment, like the first, is undertaken in two parts.
Part 1. PORTRAITS
The first part of this second assignment focusses on the visual sense. It also develops your ability to distinguish between two kinds of language: objective (neutral, dctached, impersonal, unemotional) and subjective (personal, allowing emotions and value judgments). This exercise helps (a) to sharpen your ability to observe the world around you. like a reporter, and to re-present what you see accurately and precisely in language; and (b) to develop your ability to use “I" and emotional references comfortably.
The task? Describe the face of a person of your choice from two points of view: (a) using objective language; and (b) using subjective language.
Steps:
1. Ask someone you know well (e.g., a friend, a parent, a sibling) to "sit” for you while you reproduce his or her face in writing, just as an artist would paint or draw it. Be sure to get the person's permission and to spend an adequate amount of time studying the person’s face. (You may use a photograph, if you cannot find a person willing to sit for you.)
2. Pay close attention to shape, texture, light and shadow, angles, size, colour, and so forth. The more time you take, the more you will see. Try to name the features that you see, finding precise words to capture this face as accurately and precisely as possible.
3. Describe the person’s face in one, well-organized paragraph (approximately half-to-two-thirds of a page, double-spaced, and typed), concentrating only on the use of objective language. Be as neutral, detached, impersonal, and precise in your terms as possible.
4. Now describe the person’s face in a second well-organized paragraph (approximately half-to-two-thirds of a page, double-spaced, and typed), concentrating only on the use of subjective language. Incorporate emotions and value judgements into your description.

This part requires you to write four paragraph descriptions, each focusing on a different non-visual sense. Choose an object of interest to you, which evokes one of the following four senses:
• Taste (e.g., a popsicle? chocolate cheesecake? )
• Touch (e.g., velvet? snakeskin?)
• Hearing (e.g., a favourite piece of music? a disturbing voice?)
• Smell (e.g., Monday morning's garbage? Apple crisp in the oven?)
Try to be imaginative. Avoid ho-hum objects, and create clear images, ideas, and understanding through your careful choice of words. Be wary of wandering in your description (some students, when describing, say, chocolate cake, start to stray off topic by describing the milk they drink along with the cake and so forth). Stay strictly on topic and hone your powers of focus and description. (N.B. At first you might have difficulty writing more than one or two sentences about each sense. Use brainstorming and freewriting techniques to elicit more ideas and images to develop the description.)
DUE: Bring a complete draft of Assignment B, Parts A and B (i.e., SIX paragraphs, including the two word portraits and four senses), to class;' Format: (a) 4 paragraphs,
approximately a half-page each in length; (b) typed, double spaccd.