How an Author Creates an Intended Effect using Diction Teacher Overview

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1 Teacher Overview Skills Focus: Remember Understand Apply Analyze Evaluate Create Close Reading Grammar Composition Reading Strategies Annotation Literary Elements Diction connotation denotation Tone tone determined through diction, imagery, detail, Materials and Resources The LTF Foundation Lesson Best Word for the Job is a good introduction to this lesson. Copies of Emily Dickinson s Apparently with no surprise poem. Lesson Introduction Connotative diction can be used by an author to evoke specific emotions in his/her audience. Those emotions lead the reader to understand the tone or the attitude the author has toward his/her subject. Diction is one of the strongest indicators of tone and therefore, very useful in style analysis. However, students have trouble understanding the effect of diction because they fail to make connections between the words in the text and their own prior knowledge. They have to be taught how to think about connotative word choice and its intended effect. Definitions and Examples Students need to be aware of the meanings of diction, connotative and denotative. Student Activities The strategies for moving from context to intended effect are outlined at the beginning of the lesson using a paragraph from Reynolds Price s The Great Imagination Heist. Then students are given an excerpt from a speech by General Douglas MacArthur. Students will read and annotate, paying close attention to diction. After filling out the chart and thinking about the denotative and connotative elements of particular words, the students should be able to write an assertion about MacArthur s attitude toward soldiers. The last pages of the activity are a blank template that can be used with any piece of text, including poetry. One suggestion is to use Emily Dickinson s Apparently with no surprise to help students find the tone of a poem that is not too difficult. The text of the poem is not

2 Teacher Overview included in these materials but is available online at

3 Connotative diction can be used by an author to evoke specific emotions in his/her audience. Those emotions lead the reader to understand the tone or the attitude the author has toward his/her subject. The following is the first paragraph from Reynolds Price s essay The Great Imagination Heist. The statistics are famous and unnerving. Most high-school graduates have spent more time watching television than they've spent in school. That blight has been overtaking us for fifty years, but it's only in the past two decades that I've begun to notice its greatest damage to us the death of personal imagination. Take for example the word blight from this paragraph. In order to analyze the intended effect, you must consider several things: 1) the context 2) the denotation of the word 3) the connotation of the word 4) the emotions the author wants the reader to experience because he/she used that word 5) the effect the author was trying to create on reading the word in context. These all help you determine the author s tone. Blight The word carries connotation; it is emotionally loaded, so what readers must do is to think about the associations created by the word and the intended effect. 1) Context of the word: What are the circumstances surrounding the word? How is it being used? To describe what? Blight in this context is being used to describe watching TV. 2) Denotation of the word: What is the literal meaning of the word (the dictionary definition? A blight is a destructive force; something that spoils or damages things severely. 3) Connotation of the word: What is the implied additional meaning of the word? What is suggested by the word or phrase? What does it bring to mind? A blight suggests things that are damaged, that can t grow or flourish, something that s ugly, scarred, diseased. Plant disease, especially, is associated with the word.

4 What human feelings are awakened or stirred by the word? Begin with positive or negative, but then try to apply a more specific feeling, such as happiness, anger, compassion, fear, revulsion, guilt, sadness, loneliness, self-worth, confidence, pity. surprise, dread, shock, delight, love, etc Blight evokes an emotion of revulsion or fear, something that we want to avoid. Humans want things to work, to grow and to flourish, so something that causes blight is to be avoided. 5) The effect intended by the author: What does the author want the audience to think, to feel, to do? What kinds of connections does he want us to make? When the author compares TV to a blight, he intends that the audience experience the feeling of revulsion or fear. He wants to make a connection in our minds that too much TV is something to be avoided because we want to grow and flourish and too much TV will prevent that. Patterns: Tone in a piece of text is not established by the author s use of one word or image but by a pattern of diction, imagery, figurative language, and other stylistic devices. Once you have established the effect of one word, look to see if there are other words or images that reinforce that tone. For example: Another word used by the author in this excerpt that support the negative attitude toward TV is his use of the words damage and death. So based on those three words, we can make an assertion about what the author s tone is. Based on Author/poet s name/speaker in use of diction, the writer s/speaker s attitude toward the subject of the text/speech title of text/speech one assertion about attitude (adjective) is and second assertion about attitude (adjective) Based on Price s use of diction, the writer s attitude toward TV in The Great Imagination Heist is hostile. By using the word blight, which carries negative associations and emotions with it, the author reveals his hostile attitude toward TV, believing that TV damages personal imagination.

5 Exercise A: Now look at the following excerpt from General Douglas MacArthur's farewell speech given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point on May 12, Study the diction and determine what his attitude is toward American soldiers. And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory? Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then as I regard him now as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast. But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements. In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other he has drained deep the chalice of courage. Try to find patterns of diction and then analyze how those words create an intended effect and reveal the author s tone. Note: There is always more than one tone present in complex writing. Positive Negative Choose four words from your T-chart and complete the activity below.

6 A. Word: B. Word: C. Word: D. Word:

7 Fill in the blank to create an assertion about the tone. Based on Author/poet s name/speaker in use of diction, the writer s/speaker s attitude toward the subject of the text/speech title of text/speech one assertion about attitude (adjective) is and second assertion about attitude (adjective)

8 Read the text, paying close attention to the diction. Look for patterns and contrasts. Write connotative diction from the text in the chart. Positive Negative Choose four words from your T-chart and complete the activity below. A. Word: B. Word: C. Word:

9 D. Word: Fill in the blank to create an assertion about the tone. Based on Author/poet s name/speaker in use of diction, the writer s/speaker s attitude toward the subject of the text/speech title of text/speech one assertion about attitude (adjective) and second assertion about attitude (adjective) is