Types of Definition

Working definitions
These are useful to help you to advance the general argument. This usually occurs either:

•	where the concept in question needs a provisional definition before it is clarified in the development of your argument (it is a key term), or
•	where the writer assigns peripheral status to the concept, or regards it as complex but non-controversial.

Possible or alternative definitions
These are given for definitions of concepts which can be open to controversy, and which you want to differ from. You may want to either:

•	indicate your own preferred definition among existing alternatives, or
•	offer a possible or alternative definition yourself

In each case you need to distinguish between the alternatives, whether in terms of

•	academic or professional perspective, or
•	ideological stance.

This, of course, includes other people's definitions - those of the great names in sociology, noted academics, etc.

Standard definitions
E,g. (unlike "democracy") , "Autocracy" : rule of a political entity by a single individual.

These are less interesting, since:

•	if there is a standard consensus and definition of a term with no variation in its use across professional and cultural domains,
•	then you are unlikely to need to define or comment on the term.

Your only problem with terms whose meaning is not questioned might be to question their application, e.g.
"Margaret Thatcher was the autocratic leader Britain needed in the 1980s"

Here you might want to question

1.	whether the term "autocratic" should be applied to Mrs. Thatcher, and
2.	whether an autocratic leader can ever be "needed" by a people or country

Dictionary definitions
Some dictionaries nowadays have developed routine ways of defining words.

Here are two dictionary definitions of the term sociology:

	OED: Sociology n. Science of the development, nature and laws of human society (L. socius: friend)
	COBUILD: Sociology: is the study of human societies and of the relationships between groups in these societies.