“…words, words, words.” Or, Kill your Thesaurus
Writer’s memo #8
AP Comp
2013
Motes
Through your academic career, you’ve been striving to expand your vocabulary. Through all the workbooks, quizzes,
worksheets, flash cards, crossword puzzles, and various tedious forays into dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses, and
FreeRice.coms, you have been avidly packing yourselves full of words, words, words. The most energetic of you have
probably increased your word list substantially in 10 or so years of Matching and Fill In the Blank. As grades go, this was
probably profitable; do the worksheets, study hard, ace the quiz, repeat if necessary. It was probably also profitable for
your gantlet1 of standardized tests, though perhaps not so profitable as advertised. On the ACT and the SAT you may have
had a chance to show those words some brief but productive multiple-choice love; if you want to do this, you’d best hurry
up because just last week the ACT people announced that they were going to prune back the value of such study on their
test. In AP Comp I’m afraid all that work won’t pay off. I’ve read too many February essays to have much confidence in
vocabulary study. In fact, this is what I think: Your vocabulary is too big.
Relax--I do not propose that you reduce your vocabulary. Anyhow, educational research offers few suggestions about
how I might do that. Medical research offers fewer, though I guess the noxious cocktail of Facebook, trivial textmessaging, and Flappy Bird would serve until the vocabectomy is perfected. No, I propose to help you reset your
vocabulary by deepening it. I want you to learn to use the words you already have before you add more.
We call that ‘diction’, which means ‘word choice’ despite the Latin root ‘dict-’ which connotes speaking more than
writing. Diction is the point of entry for all of our
skills: reading intensively and thoroughly; writing
lucidly and directly; analyzing, criticizing,
synthesizing. Diction is all. Let’s begin.
The clip at right is from the sports section of
One News Now, a website run by the American
Family Association. This hilarious fail is the
result of a collision between technology and
culture over the nature of words—over diction.
The error is not a ‘mistake’ or a ‘typo.’ It’s not
the sad fruit of a limited vocabulary or the
pathetic eclogue of poor preparation for the
MCA’s. It’s just a diction meltdown.2
Among the AFA’s many enthusiastic purposes is ‘combating the homosexual agenda.’ As part of that combat, the
organization has declared that it intends to “take back the word ‘gay’ from the homosexuals.” If it’s about a word and its
meanings, then it’s about diction.
1
yep, it’s ‘gantlet.’ A ‘gauntlet’ is the glove you wear with your armor; throwing it down was a challenge, picking it up an acceptance. ‘gantlet’ is a
parallel set of railroad tracks, later a metaphor for the Native American practice of forcing somebody to run down a parallel line of men with clubs.
2
This gaffe is like a ‘Cupertino,’ a species of spellchecker faux-pas which first appeared in the early days of the spellchecker. The name came about
during the establishment of the European Union when English language newspapers in Europe suddenly and arbitrarily started mentioning Cupertino, a
city in California. Here’s why. Europeans, whether native English speakers or not, tend to use the word ‘co-operation’ instead of the Americanized,
dehyphenated ‘cooperation.’ Apparently the startup of the EEU was an occasion for lots of cooperation, because that’s the word the newspapers were
aiming for. Things were fine when the writers included the hyphen in ‘co-operation,’ but when the dangerous and virulent American ‘cooperation’
appeared, the spellchecking software choked and gagged. Because of the way computers look at text, ‘Cupertino’ was closer to ‘co-operation’ than
‘co-operation.’ So ‘Cupertino’ was what the computers offered as a change. A certain ratio of those suggestions were uncritically clicked in, as they
always will be. (for some hilarious examples, see http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005361.html).
Before spellchecking there was no way to make global substitutions of one word for another in a document, so mistakes had to be made one at a
time, by hand. If you need further anecdotal support of the concept, ask me to tell the volcano joke. Mistakes occur because the writer doesn’t fully
grasp what the words mean. Cupertinos occur even when the writer knows what the words mean. At present there is no word for a Cupertino that
results from a process of systematically avoiding a particular word for political purposes. I nominate “Gaypertino”.
The status of homosexual people in the society and laws of the United States is a topic of legitimate debate. The AFA
and One News Now are entitled to their opinions, and they can write and publish as they see fit. It’s not up to me, but I
doubt their diction challenge will help their cause much.
On their website AFA and One News Now adopted a policy: they would use ‘homosexual,’ never ‘gay.’ In journalism such
a policy is called a ‘style’, as in ‘Chicago Style’ or ‘MLA style’. One News Now buys content from outside sources such as
the Associated Press (as in the example above.) The AP does not discriminate against the term ‘gay,’ or, if it does, it knows
how to distinguish proper nouns from adjectives. So before it publishes an AP story, ONN.com must substitute
‘homosexual’ for ‘gay’ so they can follow their style and continue to confound the gays’ knavish tricks and to frustrate
their politics. Few noticed until One News Now got lazy and let the spellchecker do the work without human oversight.
Computers are not good at nuanced culture war tactics; they are fast but stupid. Within a two day period the gays
whose knavish tricks were confounded included sprinter Tyson and NBA player Rudy. (The site corrected the stories
promptly but maintains the policy. In response to criticism, commenters on the ONN.com website blamed both of the Mr.
Gays for furthering the gay agenda by damaging the credibility of One News Now. This is not diction but argument.)
Spellcheckers have an excellent vocabulary and a perfect memory. They can make marvelous feats of correction and
substitution. But spellcheckers can’t do diction; they can’t list options, avoid problems, weigh connotation, explore
etymology. I know through bitter experience that I can’t expect my spellchecker to think about words, so I assign it very
limited authority over what I write.
Words are arbitrary labels for ideas. Controlling language can be useful for controlling ideas, but achieving that
control is a tricky and delicate process, especially unsuited for the skills of an unsupervised computer—or a high school
student writing on a deadline imposed by procrastination and the pressing demands of an unupdated Facebook page.
Controlling words takes work, and it’s deceptive work because words have multiple identities. To succeed in this course
and on the AP test, students must discriminate thoroughly among those identities. Here are the most pressing three.
Denotation is the specific or particular definition of a word. Students and teachers often default this to a 1:1
relationship: gay = homosexual. Even in terms of denotation—the most basic evaluation of words we have except for
spelling—equating two words is usually inaccurate, often wildly and embarrassingly so. In seventh grade, maybe; but for
real writing, words can’t be reliably learned and used interchangeably. Students who work only at this level of diction will
do poorly on the AP Exam and as writers in general. One News Now (or is it One New Snow? All-caps can create
problems, too) entrusted the diction switch to a computer, and got a bad result.
On the other hand, they were reprocessing old writing. Creating new writing is even harder. It’s fair to say that gay
usually equals homosexual, so absolute substitution of one for the other will yield a good success rate, but that’s in a game
where 100% is expected, and is actually pretty easy if you take your time. Sloppiness or ignorance at this level of diction
will doom a writer to very poor clarity and, worse, disastrous impeachment of his own credibility with the reader—an
erosion of ethos (that’s another other story.)
Connotation describes those ideas a word “brings with it” (con—Latin, ‘with’ or ‘along with’—not ‘contra’, another Latin
preposition meaning ‘against’). Connotation refers to the wide range of subtle meanings, shadings, ideas, histories famous
and infamous) that adhere to a word and contribute to its uniqueness next to other words of similar meaning.
When thoroughly considered and explored, connotation should be sufficient to generate a little essay on a word’s
meaning, especially when two denotationally similar words are compared. Those are called connotation commentaries.3
3
Like this: ‘Gay’ and ‘homosexual’ will bring very different connotations even when they are interchangeable in a sentence. ‘Gay’ is a casual word;
‘homosexual’ conveys medical formality. ‘gay’ retains some sense of its source word ‘carefree’; ‘homosexual’ is clinically specific and perhaps more
judgemental. In casual usage ‘gay’ can be strongly pejorative: ‘ugly,’ ‘bad,’ ‘repulsive,’ or even that other pejorative ‘lame’, though as gay people
enter the mainstream such pejorative usage is retreating to backwaters of eloquence and intelligence, like high school hallways.
‘gay’ is not interchangeable with ‘lesbian,’ but they aren’t simple gender-specific words, either. ‘lesbian’ can apply only to homosexual women;
‘gay’ can be used to describe both homosexual men and women. In common usage where an audience disapproves of homosexual people, such as the
AFA’s One News Now website, it’s common to see ‘lesbian’ used as an adjective, as in ‘lesbian women’ or ‘lesbian teachers.’ But in common usage
where the audience is friendly toward homosexuals or is uninterested in matters of sexuality, ‘lesbian’ is used less often as an adjective and ‘gay
women’ is not considered an error; as one writer I know put it, “‘lesbian’ feels clunky as an adjective, so I use ‘gay.’” That writer’s choice is governed
by the connotation of cadence, or meter as it is called in verse.
Word choice on this issue runs another risk. Writers intent on avoiding any offense to anyone (as opposed to the writers at ONN, who are content to
offend gay people), might become oversolicitous and continue to add terms to cover any group that might conceivably appear. Hence ‘gay’ propagates
so far toward specificity that only initialism can serve everyone: ‘GLBT’ for ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered,’ later changed to LGBT, same
A fundamental question of connotation is captured by the neat adjective pejorative, which means ‘term of abuse.’
Pejorative is far more precise than the broad and shallow ‘offensive.’4 Writers might make prim distinctions between ‘gay’
and ‘homosexual’, but ‘faggot’ is obviously a different word; it’s a clear pejorative.
Connotations arise from culture, from usage, and from the constant evolution of words. A word’s connotations can be
inclusive—what is conveyed, in what situation can the word be properly used—and exclusive—what is not conveyed, in
what situation should it not be used.
Managing connotations is critical when the tricky and passion-filled issues of the culture are discussed. Writers
frequently reveal bias (intentionally or not) by the connotations of a word they choose. Staying very alert to those
connotations then is essential for a writer to maintain control, and control is everything. Therefore it is best if a student
chooses a word they understand completely, even if a word with more vocabulary juice suggests itself.
Etymology and Common Usage ‘Etymology’ is the study of a word’s history, usually based on a word’s parts and of the
evolution of its meaning through time. It’s like a word’s ‘pedigree,’ both a history of the word’s antecedents and evidence
for its meaning. Good dictionaries are thoroughly etymological, and some, like the Oxford English Dictionary, take pages
to follow the origins of a word, tracing it through parent languages and outward into cognates in sibling languages,
supplying multiple sourced examples along the way.
Flip the coin and you have common usage, which can shift denotation regardless of the long and sober lineage of a word.
That’s the stated reason for the AFA’s problem with ‘gay’—they want to restore the word’s former meaning, perhaps out
of a sense of justice for older words everywhere. A political purpose is more evident—to deny homosexual people the
comfort—perceived or imaginary—of the word ‘gay,’ forcing them instead to be described as ‘homosexual’.5
It’s risky ground. Using words properly does little to distinguish a writer except to earn the occasional compliment for an
excellent turn of phrase. Go wrong, even a little, and the cost is great. Use a hundred words well and gain nothing; make
one error and lose all.
In this (and in other things), writing and reading are exactly the same. Controlling ideas—what we call writing—requires
control of words. Losing control of words is disastrous to the cause of writing, whether control is lost through unconcern,
haste, ignorance, or foolish trust in a computer’s discernment. Reading is the analog. Every word you do not appreciate is
a loss of meaning; the losses accumulate and you fail. High school students I have known have cultivated the art of reading
for speed by skipping ahead when they meet a word which is new or used in an unfamiliar way. This tactic causes two
troubles: the piece itself will be poorly understood, and also any opportunity to master the word for the future has been
traded away for a few extra minutes. Expect me to rattle your cage on this account with many awful quizzes.
Diction study in AP Comp will consist of a series of activities intended to raise your awareness of a process of tackling and
grasping words in their full meaning and usage. The process operates in writing, too, dictating that a student never use a
word unless the full meaning is plain. At first you’ll be exposed to readings with very challenging vocabulary, then tested
terms but apparently it’s still ladies first; add a Q for young people who are still questioning, and so on. Unstable diction results creating an
unmanageable stew of arcane connotation that changes so quickly even conscientious writers make mistakes and seem not be up-to-date on what term
is sanctioned and what is out. Some audiences expect this type of sanctioned inclusive language so forcefully that omitting a single initial might be
construed as bigotry. There is a term of art for this expectation: political correctness or PC.
4
Use of ‘offensive’ often betrays a fallacy in thinking we call ‘begging the question.’ In this process, the arguer’s statement contains the answer they
prefer. Much diction functions this way, which is why politicians try so hard to control the diction of a discussion. ‘Offensive’ used without specifying
who is offended seems to assert that offense is general, felt by all; but often the person complaining means that they are offended with the implication
that everyone else should be too. But the writer wrote it (on purpose, we assume), so it wasn’t offensive to him; the general assertion is therefore
disproven even before it is uttered—an infallible test for whether an argument begs the question. Unless the writer or the critic is simply being careless
with diction. Writers are supposed to attempt to persuade their audience; the persuasion should be open. But a critic who begs the question is trying to
smuggle the persuasion in and let it work subconsciously, without any debate or discussion of that standard.
5
Here’s a model of a diction argument—in this case, that ‘gay’ is a better diction choice than ‘homosexual’ as far as the AFA’s purposes are concerned:
“An important premise in the debate over homosexuality is the question of whether homosexuality is a choice. Anti-gay organizations like the AFA
usually assert that it is a choice and therefore, like other choices, it should be regulated by moral precepts (as opposed to legal or scientific precepts
which would apply if homosexuality were, say, an immutable genetic characteristic like ethnicity, gender, or eye color). The scientific and clinical
connotation of ‘homosexual’ suggests that it, and its polar opposite ‘heterosexual,’ should be governed by the objectivity of science and medicine.
That objectivity demands that what is true of one must be true of the other. That is, if homosexuality is a choice then heterosexuality must also be a
choice. That is a premise most AFA staffers would probably greet with puzzled contempt. Therefore a writer hoping to sustain the premise that
homosexuality is a choice might best choose ‘gay’ over ‘homosexual.’ It is true that ‘gay’ has an antonym in ‘straight,’ but the words are not related;
they’re arbitrary labels and so are more neutral on the question of whether homosexuality is a choice.”
on the meaning of those words—a torturous process intended to train you never to hurdle the tough words but to tackle
them and understand how they were used, to confront them instinctively. If you can absorb and sharpen that process,
diction will always be an entry point to the other questions we must face.