A Novel Idea: The Power of Diction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RildHZvSVtI

Would you rather be called extraordinary or odd?  Normal or common? Would you like to be a maverick?  How about a pariah?

These words don't all mean exactly the same things, but they do illustrate the power of diction, or word choice.  Every day, practically every waking hour, we speak or write words, often dishing them out or dashing them off without thinking much about our choices.

Let's give those choices more thought.

As a writer and an English professor (and, yes, a proud member of the Dictionary Society of North America), I think a lot about words--certainly more than most people--but all of us can improve our productivity and relationships by paying more attention to the words we use to express our ideas and feelings.  As we prepare to enter a new year and seize the opportunity to make ourselves and our world better, we would be wise to be more deliberate with our diction.

Let's come back to some of those words in the first paragraph.  The words extraordinary and odd have very similar denotations, or definitions.  In Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, one of the definitions of extraordinary is "exceptional to a very marked extent," and one of the definitions of odd is "differing markedly from the usual, ordinary, or accepted : PECULIAR."

Both, in other words, can be used as adjectives to describe something outside the ordinary, something amounting to an exception, so to speak.  The connotations, or associations, of these two words, however, are very different.  The word extraordinary often carries positive connotations while odd can be negative, especially when used in reference to a person. 

Similarly, both normal and maverick typically have positive connotations while common and pariah often have negative ones, even though the first two refer roughly to the same notion of being ordinary while the latter two refer to people who are outside the norm.  Again, the specific denotations are not identical, but the essential idea of being within the lines or outside the lines is similar.

You could spend a few minutes with a thesaurus and find many more examples of word pairs with similar denotations, but different connotations: confident and cocky, assertive and aggressive, glitzy and ostentatious, novel and newfangled.  There is nothing inherently wrong with either word in each pair, but choosing one over the other in a specific context comes with consequences.  The word confident may be taken as a compliment, whereas using cocky is likely to sound like an insult.  This difference is probably obvious to most people, but other differences are more nuanced.  For example, if you like a person or a person's style, you might be inclined to call this person "assertive," whereas a negative opinion could lead you to say "aggressive"--even when referring to the same behavior.  In this way, words can reveal your true feelings about a person or a thing, even though you may be only dimly aware of those feelings.  Using one word instead of another not only puts those feelings on display, but also may affect the way you come across to others and the way you shape others' opinions.  In short, words work in powerful ways, sometimes regardless of our intentions.

Wouldn't you rather make your words match your intentions instead of allowing them to run wild, wreaking havoc you never intended?

I'm not suggesting that you carry a dictionary with you wherever you go.  (Actually, you probably already do if you have a dictionary app such as the Merriam-Webster app on your phone.)  In fact, dictionaries won't necessarily help, since they do not always capture the nuances of connotation.  What can you do, then, to make your words work for you?

First, as you read and listen, stop occasionally and consider the connotations of the words you encounter.  Do they seem to match the speaker's or writer's intentions?  How do you think they affect the reader's or listener's response?  Paying close attention to individual words and the ways they are used, as well as the ways that people respond to them, is one of the best ways to master connotations so that you can manage them in your diction.

Second, before you write or speak, consider these connotations and strive to make them work for you, not against you.   Consider, too, what they may reveal about your feelings.  You may find that your diction provides glimpses of your own prejudices and leads you to reconsider your worldview.

Wow, now that's a newfangled -- I mean, a novel -- idea.