Diction
Connotation – Denotation – Syntax
Diction
• Diction – the author’s choice of words.
• Words are the writer’s basic tools:
a. They create the color and texture of the written
work.
b. They both reflect and determine the level of
formality.
c. They shape the reader’s perception.
Diction
• Good writers eschew words like pretty, nice, and bad.
Why?
• Instead, they use words the invoke a specific effect.
a. A coat isn’t torn; it is tattered.
b. The U.S. army doesn’t want revenge; it is thirsty
for revenge.
c. A door does not shut; it thuds.
Based on these examples, how does the author’s use of
diction affect the reader?
Diction
• Diction is dictated by the occasion. As with
clothes, level of formality influences appropriate
choices.
•
•
Would you wear this to
 your job interview?
Connotation and Denotation
• Connotation – the emotional feeling attached to a
word. A connotation may be positive, negative, or
neutral.
She is slender and lean.
She is thin.
She is skinny and scrawny.
• Denotation – the literal meaning of the word (the
dictionary definition).
Now practice using the connotation and denotation
handout.
Syntax
• Syntax - the arrangement of words and phrases to
create well-formed sentences.
• To grandmother’s house we will go.
What is strange about this statement?
• We will go to grandmother’s house.
Syntax
Help me with my
syntax, you will?
Yoda, from Star Wars, is known for his incorrect
syntax. Please help him fix it up in these quotes
below:
1. “Much to learn you still have.”
2. “Agree with you the council does.”
3. “When nine hundred years old you reach, look as
good you will not.”
Diction Practice
“The man sighed hugely.”
--E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
What does it mean to sigh hugely?
How would the meaning of the sentence change if we
rewrote it as: The man sighed loudly?
Fill in the blank below with an adverb:
The man coughed ___________.
(Your adverb should make the cough express an attitude. For example, the
cough could express contempt, desperation, or propriety. Do not state the
attitude. Instead, let the adverb imply it.)
Diction Practice
“Art it the antidote that can call us back from the edge of numbness,
restoring the ability to feel for one another.”
--Barbara Kingsolver
By using the word antidote, what does the author imply about the
inability to feel for another?
If we changed the word antidote to gift, what effect would it have on
the meaning of the sentence?
Can you come up with a sentence that uses a medical term to
characterize art? Explain to the class the effect this term has on the
meaning of the sentence.
Diction Practice
As you watch the short clip from the film Grease,
note how John Travolta’s character, Danny,
changes his diction in the scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS9SXH3DfT8
How would an email to your principal about why
you’re late to school differ from a text message to
your friend?