Abstract and Concrete Language

Abstract and Concrete Language

Exercise: Identify and Explain

Directions: For each of the following passages:

1. Identify the level and generality of the diction: abstract or concrete. Note that some passages may exemplify more than one kind of diction.
2. Describe the effects of the Diction on the meaning, purpose, audience, and tone.

1. The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children’s mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collar and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.”

-Flannery O’Connor

2. Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,

That crown the watery glade,

Where grateful Science (9) still adores

Her Henry’s (1) holy shade;

And ye, that from the stately brow

Of Windsor’s heights the expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead (2) survey,

Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among

Wanders the hoary (3) Thames along

His sliver-winding way.

Ah happy hills, ah pleasing shade,

Ah fields beloved in vain,

Where once my careless childhood strayed,

A stranger yet to pain!

-Thomas Gray

(9) Learning.

(1) Henry IV, founder of Eton

(2) meadow

(3) aged

3. The instructor said,

Go home and write

A page tonight.

And let the page come out of you-

The, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.

I went to school there, then Durham, then here

To this college on the hill above Harlem.

I am the only colored student in my class.

The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,

Through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,

Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,

The Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator

Up to my room, sit down, and write this page.

-Langston Hughes

4. Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did; nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; (4) and the sir Walter Elliot who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.

His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment; since to them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to any thing deserved by his own. Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgment and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterwards.-She had humored, or softened, or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for seventeen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children, to attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them.

-Jane Austen

1. In the hickory scent

Among slabs or pork

Glistening with salt,

I played Indian

In a headdress of redbird feathers

And brass buttons

Off my mother’s winter coat.

Smoke wove

A thread of fire through meat, into December

And January. The dead weight

Of the place hung around me,

Strung up with sweetgrass.

-Yusef Komunyakka