A. The town’s firm new parking policy, which goes
into effect on Monday, should significantly
reduce traffic congestion on Main Street.
B. The town’s draconian new parking policy, which
goes into effect on Monday, should significantly
reduce traffic congestion on Main Street.
Do the two sentences now mean the same thing?
Yes and no. Both
firm and
draconian suggest that the
policy is strict, but each word has a specific implication
or suggested meaning about
how strict that policy is. A
firm policy is not as strict as a
draconian policy. Fur-
thermore,
draconian suggests that the policy is not only
strict but unfairly or unreasonably so.
So, the words writers choose, even though they
may mean the same thing when you look them up in
the dictionary, actually have another level of meaning.
This is called their connotation.
Connotation is the
implied meaning, the meaning that evolves when the
dictionary definition (
denotation ) develops an emo-
tional or social register or a suggestion of degree. The
specific words writers choose—their
diction or word
choice—can therefore reveal a great deal about how
authors feel about their subjects.
H o w D i c t i o n I n f l u e n c e s M e a n i n g Put your powers of observation to work on the follow-
ing sentences. Read them carefully and then write down
what you notice about each writer’s specific choice of
words. See if you can use the writers’ diction to deter-
mine what they are inferring about the seriousness of
the situation they are describing:
A. The political parties are meeting with the hopes
of clearing up their differences.
B. The political parties have entered into negotia-
tions in an attempt to resolve their conflict.
Both sentences convey the same information:
Two parties are meeting because they have a disagree-
ment of some sort to address. But the differences in the
diction of each sentence tell us that these two situations
aren’t exactly the same—or at least that the two writ-
ers have different perceptions about the situations.
What differences did you notice between these two
sentences? List them below (an example has been pro-
vided to get you started):
