Word%20Choice,%20Word%20Order%20and%20Tone

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Poetry Lecture 2

• Word Choice, Word Order and Tone

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Word ChoiceDictionDenotations and Connotations
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Diction

• Formal diction dignified, impersonal, elevated
  use of language.
• In a solitude of the sea
• Deep from human vanity,
• And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly
  couches she.
• (Thomas Hardy)

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Diction

• Middle Diction Less formal level of diction
  used by most educated people
• You could be sitting now in a carrel
• Turning some liver-spotted page,
• Or rising in an elevator-cage
• Toward Ladies Apparel.
• (Richard Wilbur)

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Diction

• Informal Diction Colloquial, conversational
  diction that can include slang expressions.
• When getting my nose in a book
• Cured most things short of school,
• It was worth ruining my eyes
• To know I could still keep cool,
• And deal out the old right hook
• To dirty dogs twice my size.
• (Philip Larkin)

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Denotations and Connotations

• Denotations literal, dictionary meanings of a
  word.
• Connotations associations and implications that
  go beyond a words literal meanings.
  Connotations derive from how the word has been
  used and the associations people make with it.

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Denotations and Connotations

• Write the denotation and a few connotations for
  the word CULT.

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Denotation and Connotation

• Definition of CULT
• 1
• formal religious veneration worship
• 2
• a system of religious beliefs and ritual also
  its body of adherents
• 3
• a system for the cure of disease based on dogma
  set forth by its promulgator lthealth cultsgt
• 4
• a great devotion to a person, idea, object,
  movement, or work (as a film or book) especially
  such devotion regarded as a literary or
  intellectual fad b the object of such devotion
  c a usually small group of people characterized
  by such devotion

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Connotations

• Connotations derive their resonance from a
  persons experiences with a word.
• Poets rely on widely shared associations with
  words.
• Connotative meanings are valuable because they
  allow poets to be economical and suggestive
  simultaneously.

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Connotations

• Read the poem and paraphrase the speakers story.
• The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
• From my mothers sleep I fell into the State
• And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
• Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of
  life,
• I woke to black flack and the nightmare fighters.
• When I died they washed me out of the turret with
  a hose.

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Word Order

• Meanings in poems are conveyed by the poets
  arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and
  sentences to achieve particular effects.
• Syntax the ordering of words into meaningful
  verbal patterns.

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Word Order

• Read the following line from Dickinsons poem, A
  narrow Fellow in the Grass.
• His notice sudden is.
• Why does Dickinson place the verb is at the end
  of the line? What effect does this achieve?

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Tone

• Tone is the writers attitude toward the subject.
• Tone is created by all the elements of the poem.
  

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• Look at Common Ground, by Judith Ortiz Coffer
• How do you interpret the title? How did your
  idea of its meaning change as you read the poem?
• What is the relationship between the first and
  second stanzas?
• What is the tone of this poem? How do the diction
  and imagery create the tone?