Description- Detail and Diction
Detail:
Diction:
Connotation:
Denotation:
Step One: Detail
Have your photo out on your desk and describe the scene using your five senses and facts–detail.
Try to be as objective as possible. Share with a partner.
Step Two: Diction
Does that physical description explain the significance of your photo- why it means something to
you? Probably not, because there is more to it than just how it looks. We can use diction to convey
meaning and tone.
For example, the following sentence is detailed:
Hoping to win, Robbie reached for the ball.
This sentence uses diction:
Desperate to win, Robbie lunged for the ball.
What words carry connotations- associations and emotions we have for a word outside of their
denotation, or definition?
Diction:
1. The choice of appropriate language for your audience – technical, formal, informal, familiar
2. The specific choice words for their meaning or for their connotation.
3. Special types: slang, dialect (pronunciations, etc.), and jargon (ie. computer jargon)
Diction often contributes to mood and tone.
Mood: The emotional affect that the author creates for the reader
Tone: The author’s attitude toward a subject.
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Look at your descriptive piece. Do you have any words that carry a specific connotation?
Underline any you may have.
Finally, look back at your piece. How can you use diction to subjectively describe what is
happening in your photo? Give it a try –write a second paragraph below your original. In this
paragraph, focus on using word choice and diction to convey emotions associated with your
picture.
Name: __________________________
Read this passage from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. As you read, highlight
words that show diction – words with a specific connotation.
“DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds
hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly
dreary tract of country ; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within
view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the
building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was
unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually
receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before
me - upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of
decayed trees - with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more
properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium - the bitter lapse into everyday life - the
hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an
unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of
the sublime.”
1. What is the effect of the diction words?
2. What is the mood of the piece?
3. Describe the author’s tone.