Aim: How does a writer create effects through the connotations of words and images?
Do Now: THINK/SHAREWhat if life had a RESET button?
It’s a terrible thing to drop your grandmother’s prized china vase on the kitchen floor. And did you really have to be so mean to your sibling yesterday? At one time or another, we’ve all done or said something that makes us cringe with regret. We wish we could turn back the clock by a minute or a day and just do the whole thing over. Based on your understanding of the aforementioned, share a time when you did or said something that you regret, and explain why you felt that way. you regret, and explain why you
To start off the class, we shared our past experiences, times where we wish we can go back in time and fix things.
Fiona said that once she got annoyed at her younger brother for not doing chores, resulting in her hiding her brother’s ipad.
Natalie shared out her story of how she pranked her brother into drinking salt water by putting salt in his water without him noticing.
Ms. Peterson finishes this activity by sharing her hilarious story of her youth, when she was 13. Both her and her cousin were at their grandmother’s place with no parent supervision so things went a bit south. Her cousin started to annoy her by calling her names, which resulted in Ms. Peterson nearly drowned her cousin in the pool.
CONNOTATION and DENOTATION
In this lesson, the main focus is about being able to distinguish between connotation and denotation.
Connotation: The feelings that a word might make you feel. Some examples are aroma and stench. Aroma has a positive connotation while stench has a negative connotation.
Denotation: The literal meaning of a word, not figurative language.
Some examples to help understand connotations and denotations:
Crowd and Mob: Both have the same denotations, meaning many people, however a crowd is a more positive way of saying many people instead of a mob. When thinking of a mob, most people would think of violent people coming together, thus a mob has a negative connotation.
Blue: The word blue’s denotation means this color, however the connotation is different. Someone might say, he or she is looking blue. This does not necessarily mean that they are turning blue. The connotation of the word blue might be that the person is not feeling well, whether being nervous or sick.
For more examples check out this video on connotations and denotations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz9V1FfC6bA&ab_channel=KevinSpaans
TEAMWORK
CONNOTATION and DENOTATION in Speak
“I dive into the stream of fourth-period lunch students and swim down the hall to the cafeteria.”
What connotations do the images of diving into and swimming through other students have here?
Our team wrote the connotations to give off a negative feeling and the hall and cafeteria is very busy. Swimming and diving here shows how the narrator is just trying to stay afloat in this situation.
Now rewrite the sentence, trying to keep the same denotative meaning but changing the connotations to make them neutral
I walk down the hall of fourth period lunch students and down the hall to the cafeteria.
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Now consider what is conveyed by Anderson’s diction (particularly the verbs) in this sentence.
“I ditch my tray and bolt for the door.”
Based on the verbs, what inferences might you draw about the speaker’s feelings at this moment?
Our team’s response was the verbs gave a negative connotation as the word ditch and bolt shows that she is embarrassed. It also reminded us of how she got hit with the massive food and got embarrassed.
Now revise Anderson’s sentence to be more neutral.
I threw away the tray and walked towards the door.
What’s the Connection between our Do Now Discussion and Connotation and Denotation?
The literary text that we will be reading explores not only regret but other concepts that shape the way we see and experience the world——poverty, pride, and beauty, to name a few.
Directions: As you read, highlight/underline the text for examples of diction, syntax, and imagery that create the narrator’s voice. Be sure to annotate the connotative effect of word choices, and explain the inferences they lead you to make regarding the tone, character, or significance of the event.
My annotations:
“When I think of the home town of my youth, all that I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets into the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of bare brown feet. I don’t know why I should remember only the dust. Surely there must have been lush green lawns and paved streets under leafy shade trees somewhere in town; but memory is an abstract painting—it does not present things as they are, but rather as they feel. And so, when I think of that time and that place, I remember only the dry September of the dirt roads and grassless yards of the shantytown where I lived. And one other thing I remember, another incongruency of memory—a brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust—Miss Lottie’s marigolds.”
This paragraph really describes the setting in detail, how it was late summer and hot, the dust was crumbly brown and how it was mostly dirt roads and grassless yards. It really gives off a negative feeling.
HOMEWORK
HW: “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier--Read the short story, “Marigold’s,” by Eugenia Collier, and annotate the story, while reading. Use the annotations rubric as a guide as to what you should be executing.
Site for Marigolds story: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vlZ3RfJA_gbmYyrvqiv7h7eUXylWXWdbCgATev9zn8I/edit
Annotation Rubric:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZroTuy2oPXbNu01D4Dyt-j0BoAxkFKtl1oZygowDTsU/edit
Throughout the lesson, I learned more about the usage of connotations and denotations, resulting in a deeper understanding of these two being used in the text. To summarize, I learned that Connotation means how the word gives off a feeling, whether it is a positive one or a negative one. To put in simpler terms, connotations means figurative language. They are not the literal meaning, they can mean something absolutely different. Denotation is the opposite of connotation. Denotation is the literal meaning of a word. Learning these two definitions can help me improve my way of reading by understanding in a deeper sense with the narrator or the author. In the future, I can also use this to help annotate even more detailed notes, thus reducing the time needed to summarize a text. Using the understanding of these two terms and examples, I will incorporate them into my future writings, improving them. Throughout the passage of “Speak” and its use of connotations and denotations, I have finally understood more than I ever have about what the narrator was really trying to say.
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