Why should I define my term?

I am always asked how I define patriotism or citizenship. And I always struggle to reply. Because out there in the literature, there are gazillions of definitions, some of them conflicting. I always tell people, the term is defined the way people want to define it, I don't fix the definition... I think... Perhaps I should play the role of a Philosopher and try to define it for myself.

'The nature of citizenship', Aristotle declared, '... is a question which is often disputed: there is no general agreement on a single definition.' Yet the terms 'citizen' and 'citizenship' are in constant use throughout the world today: the concepts are central to everyday political discourse. Is it therefore good enough for 'citizenship' to be a 'Humpty-Dumpty' word, in danger of crashing into fragments while asserting that it means just what it chooses to mean? Surely not. Citizens should know what their status implies; and they should understand when politicians abuse the term by according the whole concept only a partial range of attributes. It is, moreover, important to understand the complexity of the role of citizen and to appreciate that much needs to be learned if civic rights are to be exercised, civic duties are to be performed and a life of civic virtue is to be pursued. The citizen, in short, must be educated; and no teacher can properly construct the necessary learning objectives if semantic confusion surrounds the very subject to be studied.

This is not to argue in a world of richly diverse political traditions that a detailed prescription of universal application is either possible or desirable. Rather to suggest that those who use the words 'citizenship', 'world citizenship' and 'education for citizenship' should be aware of the long history and great wealth of meaning which lie behind them. Furthermore, only confusion and harm can arise from loose employment of the term. If we can but reach an agreement on some definitional highest common factor, political discourse and social education can only benefit from the clarification. To this end the present work is offered as some contribution. (Heater, 2004, p. vii) 

I think one of my goals for my PhD studies must be to come up with an operationally ready to be used definition of patriotism, usable in the educational setting. Yes. Cannot skirt this issue anymore. Difficult to define, so go in and solve the problem, don't avoid anymore.

I just received a book to review (Kleinig, Keller & Primoratz, 2015) and they did define patriotism. Will learn from these philosophers and write one for myself.

References

Heater, D. (2004). Citizenship: The civic ideal in world history, politics and education (3 ed.). Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

Kleinig, J., Keller, S., & Primoratz, I. (2015). The ethics of patriotism: A debate. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

Terminology

"... Unless the reader comes to terms with the author, the communication of knowledge from one to the other does not take place. For a term is the basic element of communicable knowledge.

A term is not a word - at least, not just a word without further qualifications. If a term and a word were exactly the same, you would only have to find the important words in a book in order to come to terms with it. But a word can have many meanings, especially an important word. If the author uses a word in one meaning, and the reader reads it in another, words have passed between them, but they have not come to terms. Where there is unresolved ambiguity in communication, there is no communication, or at best communication must be incomplete.

Just look at the word "communication" for a moment. Its root is related to the word "common." We speak of a community as a group of people who have something in common. Communication is an effort on the part of one person to share something with another person (or with an animal or a machine): his knowledge, his decisions, his sentiments. It succeeds only when it results in a common something, such as an information or knowledge that two parties share.

When there is ambiguity in the communication of knowledge, all that is in common are the words that one person speaks or writes and another hears or reads. So long as ambiguity persists, there is no meaning in common between writer and reader. For the communication to be successfully completed, therefore, it is necessary for the two parties to use the same words with the same meanings - in short, to come to terms. When that happens, communication happens, the miracle of two minds with but a single thought.

A term can be defined  as an unambiguous word. That is not quite accurate, for strictly there are not unambiguous words. What we should have said is that a term is a word used unambiguously. The dictionary is full of words. They are almost all ambiguous in the sense that they have many meanings. But a word that has several meanings can be used in one sense at a time. When writer and reader somehow manages for a time to use a given word with one and only one meaning, then, during that time of unambiguous usage, they have come to terms.

You cannot find terms in dictionaries, though the materials for making them are there. Terms occur only in the process of communication. They occur when a writer tries to avoid ambiguity and a reader helps him by trying to follow his use of words. There are, of course, many degrees of success in this. Coming to terms is the ideal toward which writer and reader should strive. Since this is one of the primary achievements of the art of writing and reading, we can think of terms as a skilled use of words for the sake of communicating knowledge." (p. 96-98)

Adler, M. J. & Doren, C. V. (2014) How to read a book: The classic guide to intelligent reading. New York: Simon & Schuster

This is why definitions are so important! And perhaps also the literature review... So you have the chance to clarify to your reader what exactly do your terms mean. Because for the rest of the article, you are using those terms and if the reader has something else in mind, you're communication is going to have some problems. 

The reviewer asked for my voice. He (or she) wanted me to articulate my own views on how "critical patriotism" might be like in Singapore. He wanted to hear my voice. And he asked me to "clarify the epidemiological tradition of "critical" and get into the roots of the version of "critical" that should or could accompany "patriotism"". 

I'm wondering if my issue is with terminology. That I need to tell my readers what is my personal version of critical patriotism, and define it well. I wonder if by doing this, I have settled the issue with my voice and also the issue with the definition. Is it true currently everyone has their own meanings of "critical" and it's not really clear which type of "critical" goes with "patriotism". 

Oh Lord, give me wisdom!