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Diction Video

Added Sep 02, 2013 •

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This video introduces you to the rhetorical power of diction and explains a variety of diction terms.

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high students today we're going to be talking about diction this is the first entry for your Lexicon so remember that you're required to take what's on this I might check them tomorrow as a 5-point quiz and a lexicon just so you know refers to a specialized vocabulary so throughout this mess time you giving you a specialized vocabulary used to discuss rhetoric the first well this entire lecture is on **** dictionnaire first award choice that can either mean a specific word choice the choice of one word that use of diction here in the hope or the entire general character of the language in a text three things to consider when looking at diction are the sound of the words the appearance of the words and the words mean so on the side there I have a picture of President Obama and it's made what's the words hope and change because that sort of diction to find his election campaign particularly in 2008 Atlantis to semantics semantics refers to a branch of linguistics that studies words studies words meaning their historical and development their connotations and their relationships to one another so in the cartoon on the side it says semantics a classroom in which meaning discussed and then has a parenthetical actually this is just the door of the classroom is on the other side of the door that's making a joke about semantics because they want to use the specific words that mean exactly what they want them to say another issue with semantics that we seen really recently as a discussion of the word literally quite a few dictionaries have added this definition for literally used to ignore that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or do with stress Express strong feeling so if I said something like and when she walked in I literally died. Generally means the opposite what we take as literally but now it's an accepted definition in many dictionaries and as people discuss this they're discussing semantics there too in the history of that words meaning  one of the major things you want to think about with diction is denotation vs. connotation denotation of a word is the dictionary definition it's the literal meaning it doesn't have any attached emotion so for instance for Monday location of Monday is the second day of the week following Sunday there's no emotional connection that's in contrast to Connaught connotation is the not literal associative meaning of the world word so it's what we associate with the word and the soft is very emotional but can also relate to ideas or attitudes so the connotation of Monday could include things like begin what's the worker school week associated with stress lack of sleep responsibilities loss of Freedom so these pictures are about connotations of Monday rather than denotations and connotations are where the magic is that's how we can use language to play affect the reader the audience good rhetoric relies on connotations because because it's going to help readers feel Lucerne react a certain way  so are they said one of the things you consider with diction is the sound of words we use two different words to describe one is euphonious euphonious language includes Pleasant sounding words so to produce this it often uses long sound vowel sounds rather than short vowel sounds so I in for instance lights sounds a lot nicer than and words like lick and then it's a lot of liquid consonants those are the ones that Flo together LMN and and then soft consonants those are the ones that you can kind of hear the airflow so  a lot of those because again it's going to create I sort of harmonious flow between the words is cacophonous it has all of those breaks with the really harsh sounding consonants short sounds rather than long vowel sounds and then the harsh sounding consonants are referred to as close if consonance those are the type that are abrupt and have a hard Edge to them like the they're all very harsh sounding in general cacophonous is more jobs or more challenging to say you have to do more work get your mouth around the words and this breaks up the flow of the peace because it has the harsh sounding letters you have to slow down because it's harder to say here are some examples this poem by Robert Herrick is using euphonious language so smooth so sweet so silver my voice but listen to be walking and light chamber melting melodious words to Lutes of Amber so it has some clothes of consonants obviously you can't eliminate them off full Oak at how many long vowel sounds it has and how many **** and owls and ends that has so it flows like a song which is appropriate because it's just grabbing the beautiful voice of a woman so the language used in the phone echoes the sound of her voice in contrast we have this excerpt from Dulce at decorum s like Baker's under sacks knock kneed coughing like hags we cursed through sludge so on The Haunting flares we turned our backs and towards are different began to trudge trudge but has many many clothes consonance so the fence double and knock-kneed they're hard to say they slow me down and not similarly is for the effects of the Peace it's describing soldiers store during World War 1 soldiers that are injured and tired so as I read it unforced treated in a stumbling slow next to Echo the way that the soldiers are moving  another thing to look out with diction is monosyllabic versus polysyllabic words Slavic words are one syllable in length on this can have several effect it sometimes sounds very simple as if you're explaining something to kindergarteners Orkin sounds really really urgent and there's an example right there it's a pretty simple penguin polysyllabic language has words that are more than unsellable and Lamprecht the poly versus the mono and this often creates a sense of complexity or an early diet affect so it sounds more educated sounds intelligent and complex like this dog and educated because he's wearing glasses and we all know that's what class is me here's another example of how this works so from Farewell to Arms we have this piece where Lieutenant Henry says I did I want to see the bank there were shots when I ran and shots when I came up the first time I heard them when I was almost above water there were no shots now very very monosyllabic it's hard to find examples with that amount of monosyllabic language but here it creates a sense of urgency and contrast recipes from my Antonia has a lot of polysyllabic language all about stretch drying cornfield of the pale gold color I remembered so along the cattle pots with flames of Golden Rod were already Fading Into sun-warmed velvet grey with gold threads in it and it continues in the same way that's going to create a different effect it kind of slows me down I have to spend more time thinking about the words when you talk about monosyllabic and polysyllabic language you want be careful to point out exactly where it's happening so it wouldn't be enough for me to quote one of these lines and then say it has polysyllabic language this has this effect you don't want to do something like this so I would say in a passage saturated with detailed imagery Jim burdens polysyllabic descriptions of drying corn field Goldenrod Fading Into Sun warms velvet so they aren't showing the polysyllabic words slows the readers Pace encouraging the readers adoption of Jim's relax nostalgic mood for firmani Slavic I might do something monosyllabic I might do something like this Lieutenant Henry's abundant use of monosyllabic words in these four sentences 34 out of 37 words of one syllable suggests not only the urgency of the passage but the simple reality of the moment if he does not Escape he will be shot that reminds me you want to do the same thing if you were talking about euphonious or cacophonous language pretty much with any diction words you'd want to point out exactly what words are afraid to give some examples  so I might say something like cacophonous diction like fence double bigger socks knock-kneed and creates a harsh sound which Echoes literally the destructive sound of war and metaphorically the harsh reality of the soldiers existence another aspect of language is whether the diction is informal or formal informal language is conversational so it's something that would be appropriate for a conversation can you end up here but less so for an academic paper it's the plain language of Everyday Use including slang jargon vulgarity and violence to be more monosyllabic because it's less formal so if I said I just got to get my stuff that's informal and contrast formal language of the professional educated its academic language this is what you'll want to use for your papers it's dignified elevated but it lasts personal connection that's often created with informal language which explains why sometimes informal is better and includes elaborate or sophisticated vocabulary it's probably Slavic and in contrast to I just got to get my stuff someone might say I just need to gather my belongings  so if I were talking about something that you wrote informal way to discuss it might be to say that was totally awesome wear as a formal way to discuss it with speed of stay it was eloquently stated when you discussed this here's another example of informal vs. formal what you'll remember from our two how to Market books appeal to many of you because he used in formal languages with phrases like it's funny how people  that's very conversational Adler appealed to some of you because he sounded like an authority with his very formal language discussing about how books answer great fundamental chances polysyllabic he has more complex sentence structure even  turn off the exit to Splash Mountain in Disneyland talk to you about colloquialisms are the use of slang or informalities in speaker writing usually this isn't appropriate for academic essays but sometime Ted speeches or certain types of essays authors want to use colloquial language the better appeal for Their audience a bus is an example of colloquial language at the very end of Splash Mountain at says yes sir things were Mighty satisfactual and that's the phrase especially my teeth actual isn't formal language it's colloquial and its use here at Splash Mountain to create a folksy feel it feels like we're in the south colloquialism is very similar to informal language often they're used as synonyms however cloak will language has is more like a sub has the elements of more use of slang and it's very conversational another subset of global language is regional dialect and we're going to talk about  dialect is a subset of colloquialism and it refers to the language spoken by a specific for Anna specific area an example from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which if I were doing this lecture and class I would read what don't want it saved on a video because I would be making a fool of myself and likely not doing Justice to the dial Wayne asserts you worked and very very Hearts perfect so you can just read that for yourself jargon refers to special is language of a profession or group of Association so someone would say oh you're just trying to use that medical jargon to confuse as if someone's using purposefully difficult language that's convoluted and that Outsiders couldn't understand levels of fruits that use jargon are lawyers or doctors even literary critics when you get to high-level English and then this cartoon is making fun of the jargon of corporate America with words like Synergy and utilization should have team player objective versus subjective language is another dividing Point prediction objective language is impersonal and unemotional so Miss quotation here the idea is it supposed to sound very factual it's about the writing but less about the author it's not Master sounds like an opinion so we even have the yet the scientific evidence makes it seem unlikely so again it's using language that's very factual that's removed from the speaker subjective on the other hand is personal and emotional language so again another example for my Tamia and it's discussing gems experience specifically I was something that lay under the sun and felt it so they're we're going to see a connection between the author or the constructed speaker and the work we're going to see the person behind it it's important to note that even if something is written in a in an objective it's still to an extent subjective anything that comes through a person's point of you is going to be shaped by their perception and some way however it's a style two attempts to write something in an objective way that removes oneself from the material  concrete first abstract language concrete or first to language with tangible and specific information whereas abstract is conceptual conceptual and philosophical language so in this quote from Farewell to Arms Lieutenant Henry says abstract words such as Glory courage or Hollow were obscene besides the con beside the concrete names of villages The Embers of Roads the names of rivers the numbers of regiments and dates this sort of concrete language is things that he can see and feel right he can look at the river he can stand and walk on the road that's very con and for him and wartime that was much more accessible than these abstract ideas what does honor actually mean in Warfare what does courage actually mean it's not something you can graft and so it was more difficult for him to understand so not one quote we see examples of both types of I'm somewhat related to that but not the same thing as the contrast between literal and figurative language literal language is straightforward Lang without embellishment so in this poem about war the man he killed by Thomas Hardy hit begins with actually this is from the middle of it but range does infantry and Starion face-to-face I shot at him and he at me and killed him in his place it is literal and it is blunt telling us exactly what happened in contrast to figurative language which is not literal because it uses literary devices like hyperbole rametta for back to dolls at the quest  we have some similes in there I just comparing the soldiers to Old Fager's and it's play them to Hogs they're not literally Beggars and they're not literally had but that simile which is a subset of metaphor is figure language that's helping brought in our understanding of what it's like for the soldiers at that moment  these are some words to describe diction I want you to look over them I'm going to post them in the classroom but part of what I want you to do tonight is look at them and make sure you understand the difference between each of them and how you can use them to describe language alright thanks very much see you tomorrow

Uploaded by Melissa Rhoades-Rudder '01.

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