Diction

__** Diction 1 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Art is the **antidote** that can call us back from the edge of numbness, restoring the ability to feel for another.

-Barbara Kingsolver, “High Tide in Tuscon”

__ Discuss __ :

1.By using the word **//antidote//**, what does the author imply about the inability to feel for another?

2.If we changed the word **//antidote//** to gift, what effect would it have on the meaning of the sentence?

__** Diction 2 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

As I watched, the sun broke weakly through, brightened the rich red of the fawns, and **kindled** their white spots.

E.B. White, “Twins,” Poems and Sketches of E.B. White

__ Discuss __ :

1.What kind of flame does **//kindled//** imply? How does this verb suit the purpose of the sentence?

2. Would the sentence be strengthened or weakened by //__changing the sun **broke** weakly through__// to //__the sun **burst** through__//? Explain the effect this change would have on the use of the verb kindled.

__** Diction 3 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

An aged man is but a paltry thing A **tattered** coat upon a stick…

__//-//__W.B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”

__ Discuss __ :

1.What picture is created by the use of the word **//tattered//**?

2.By understanding the connotations of the word **//tattered//**, what do we understand about the persona’s attitude toward **//an aged man//**?

__** Diction 4 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

The man sighed **hugely**.

- E. Annie Proulx//. The Shipping News//

__ Discuss __ :

1.What does it mean to sigh **//hugely//**?

2. How would the meaning of the sentence change if we rewrote it as: The man sighed **//loudly//**.

__** Diction 5 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

A rowan* like a **lipsticked** girl

white flower clusters and orange berries.
 * a small deciduous tree native to Europe, having

- Seamus Heaney, “Song,” //Field Work//

__ Discuss __ :

1.Other than the color, what comes to mind when you think of a **//lipsticked//** girl?

2. How would it change the meaning and feeling of the line if, instead of **//__lipsticked__//** girl, the author wrote **//__girl with lipstick on__//**?

__** Diction 6 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Abuelito under a **bald** light bulb, under a ceiling **dusty** with flies, puffs his cigar and counts money soft and wrinkled as old Kleenex.

- Sandra Cisneros, “Tepeyac,” Woman Hollering Creek

__ Discuss __ :

1. How can a ceiling be dusty with flies? Are the flies plentiful or sparse? Active or still? Clustered or evenly distributed?

2. What does Cisneros mean by a bald light bulb? What does this reveal about Abuelito’s room ?

__** Diction 7 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

“Meanwhile, the United States Army, **thirsting** for revenge, was **prowling** the country north and west of the Black Hills, killing Indians Quote

- Dee Brown, //Bury my Heart at// // Wounded Knee //

__ Discuss __ :

1. What are the connotations of **//thirsting//**? What feelings are evoked by this diction?

2.What are the connotations of **//prowling//**? What kind of animals prowl? What attitude toward the U.S. army does this diction convey?

__** Diction 8 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Most men wear their belts low here, there being so many outstanding bellies, some big enough to have names of their own and be formally introduced. Those men don’t suck them in or hide them in loose shirts; they let them hang free, they pat them, they stroke them as they stand around and talk.”

- Garrison Keillor, “Home,” // Lake //// Wobegon //// Days //

__ Discuss __ :

1. What is the usual meaning of **//outstanding//**? What is its meaning here/ What does this pun reveal about the attitude of the author toward his subject?

2.Read the second sentence again. How would the level of formality change if we changed **//suck//** to **//pull//** and **//let them//** hang free to **//accept them//**?

__** Diction 9 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Doc awakened very slowly and clumsily like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool. His mind **broke the surface** and fell back several times.

- John Steinbeck, //Cannery Row//

__ Discuss __ :

1. What is the subject of the verb broke? What does this tell you about Doc’s ability to control his thinking at this point in the story?

__2__.To what does surface refer? Remember that good writers often strive for complexity rather than simplicity.

__** Diction 10 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Pots rattled the kitchen where Momma was frying corn cakes to go with vegetable soup for supper, and the homey sounds and scents **cushioned** me as I read of Jane Eyre in the **cold** English mansion of a **colder** English gentleman.

- Maya Angelou, //I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings//

__ Discuss __ :

1. By using the word **//cushioned//**, what does Angelou imply about her life and Jane Eyre’s life?

2. What is the difference between the **//cold//** of the English mansion and the **//cold//** of the English gentleman ? What does Angelou’s diction convey about her attitude toward Jane’s life?

__** Diction 11 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on I step inside, letting the door **thud** shut.

- Phillip Larkin, “Church Going”

__ Discuss __ :

1. What feelings are evoked by the word thud?

2. How would the meaning change if the speaker let the door **//slam//** shut?

__** Diction 12 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

We have been making policy on the basis of myths, the first of them that trade with China will **dulcify** Peking policy. That won’t work; there was plenty of trade between North and South when our Civil War came on.

- William F. Buckley, Jr., “Like It or Not, Pat Buchanan’s Political Rhetoric Has True Grit”

__ Discuss __ :

1. What does **//dulcify//** mean? What attitude toward his readers does his diction convey?

2. What attitude does Buckley communicate by writing our Civil War instead of the Civil War? __** Diction 13 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Wind **rocks** the car. We sit parked by the river, Silence between our teeth. Birds scatter across islands Of broken ice…

- Adrienne Rich, “Like This Together, for A.H.C.”

__ Discuss __ :

1. What are the feelings produced by the word **//rocks//**? Are the feelings gentle, violent, or both?

2. How would the meaning change if we changed the first line to Wind **//shakes//** the car?

__** Diction 14 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Close by the fire sat an old man whose Countenance was **//furrowed//** with distress.

- James Boswell, Boswell’s London Journal

__ Discuss __ :

1. What does the word furrowed connote about the man’s distress?

2. How would the impact of the sentence be changed if **//furrowed//** were changed to **//lined//**?

__** Diction 15 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Her face was white and sharp and slightly gleaming in the candlelight, like **//bone//**. No hint of pink. And the hair. So fine, so pale, so much, crimped by its plaiting into springy zigzag tresses, **//clouding//** neck and shoulders, shining metallic in the candlelight, catching a hint, there it was, of green again, from the reflection of a large glazed cache-pot containing a vigorous sword-leafed fern.

- A.S. Byatt, //Possession: A Romance//

__ Discuss __ :

1. When the author describes a face “like bone,” what feelings are suggested?

2. How can hair be “clouding neck and shoulders”? What picture does this word create?

__** Diction 16 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

“Ahhh,” the crowd went, “Ahhh,” as the most beautiful of fireworks, for the sky was alive now, one instant a **pond** and at the next a **womb** of new turns: “Ahhh,” went the crowd, “Ahhh!”

- Norman Mailer, “Of a Fire on the Moon”

__ Discuss __ :

1.This quote describes the Apollo-Saturn launching. The Saturn was a huge rocket that launched the Apollo space capsule to the moon. Why is the sky described as a **//pond//** and then a **//womb//**? What happens that changes the sky from a **//pond//** to a **//womb//**?

2.What does Mailer’s use of **//womb//** tell the reader about his attitude toward the launch?

__** Diction 17 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

…then Satan first knew pain. And writh’d him to and fro convolv’d; so sore The **grinding** sword with discontinuous wound Passed through him.

- John Milton, //Paradise Lost//, Book VI, lines 327-330

__ Discuss __ :

1. By using the word **//grinding//**, what does Milton imply about the pain inflicted by the sword?

__2__.What does discontinuous mean? How does the use of discontinuous reinforce the idea of a **//grinding//** sword?

__** Diction 18 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Newts are the most common of salamanders. Their skin is a **lighted** green, like water in a sunlit pond, and rows of very bright red dots line their backs. They have gills as larvae; as they grow they turn a luminescent red, lose their gills, and walk out of the water to spend a few years padding around in damp places on the forest floor. Their feet look like **fingered baby hands**, and they walk in the same leg patterns as all four-footed creatures ---dogs, mules, and, for that matter, lesser pandas.

- Annie Dillard, //Pilgrim at Tinker Creek//

__ Discuss __ :

1. What is the difference between a **//lighted//** green and a **//light//** green? Which one do you think creates a more vivid picture?

2. What is the effect of saying **//fingered baby hands//** instead of simply **//baby hands//**?

__** Diction 19 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

This is earthquake Weather! Honor and Hunger Walk **lean** Together.

- Langston Hughes, “Today”

__ Discuss __ :

1. What does **//lean//** mean in this context?

2. Is lean a verb, an adjective, or both? How does this uncertainty and complexity contribute to the impact of the lines?

__** Diction 20 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Twenty **bodies** were thrown out of tour wagon. Then the train resumed its journey, leaving behind it a few hundred naked **dead**, deprived of burial, in the deep snow of a field in Poland.

- Elie Wiesel, //Night//

__ Discuss __ :

1. This scene describes the transporting of Jews from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, both concentration camps in World War II. In this selection, Wiesel never refers to the men who die on the journey as men. Instead they are **//bodies//** or simply **//dead//**. How does this diction shape the reader’s understanding of the situation?

2. How would the meaning change if we substituted **//dead people//** for **//bodies//**?