Seana Shiffin

Essay topic—- 1. Seana Shiffrin develops a thinker-based approach to the foundational grounds of free speech. What is it that a foundational account of the grounds of free speech needs to explain? What is Shiffrin’s thinker-based approach to the grounds of free speech? How does this thinker-based approach differ from speaker-based, listener-based, or democratic-based accounts? Do you agree with the thinker-based account of the grounds of free speech? Why or why not?
Evaluation:
Your paper will be graded along four dimensions:
-Understanding. Have you correctly described the views and claims at issue? Have you done so without mixing in your own opinion?
-Clarity & Precision. Have you expressed yourself in a way that is both clear and precise? Have you avoided ambiguity and merely suggestive language?
-Dialectic. Do you understand how the various claims interact logically? Do you understand why some are compatible and others are not? Does your assessment of the claims make sense?
-Writing policies. Have you followed the citation and quotation policy?

Citation:
-If you are not sure whether to cite a source or not, cite it. There is no great harm in over-citing, but under-citing is plagiarism.
-Make your citations specific, down, at least, to the page cited. The point of a citation is to be a useful guide the reader who wants to follow along. If you cite an entire article, without a page number, it’s not very useful.

Quotation v. Paraphrase:
-Aside from the key claims in the prompt, please do not quote the handouts or the readings. Use paraphrase instead– that is, restate those ideas in terms that make more sense to you. (Of course your paraphrase must be cited!) Out of their original context, direct quotes can be difficult to understand. A careful paraphrase will always be more useful to the reader than a direct quote.
Prose:
-Your task is to write a breathtakingly clear paper. Do whatever you need to achieve this goal. I recommend:
-Use plain, clear language, the way you would if you were actually speaking.
-Avoid unnecessary sentences, but make sure that you carefully explain yourself.
-Avoid long, complicated words where there are simpler ones you can use instead.
-Avoid flowery language and fancy sentence structure.
-Avoid jargon.
-Don’t invent new words.
– Feel free to use the first-person pronoun “I”. And you can start sentences with the word “and”.
-You should try to make your writing like a car manual, not like poetry

Citation Policy:
-External sources are allowed, but not encouraged. Of course they must be cited.
-If you quote material from handouts, you must include a citation and bibliography entry.
Otherwise, you can use ideas (but not exact phrases) from handouts and lecture without citation.