Guided Notes:

Diction & Tone

Directions: Fill in the blanks as the notes are presented.

  1. Diction ______
  1. Tone ______

When analyzing diction, consider such questions as:

Is the language concrete or abstract?

  1. Concrete words: ______
  1. Abstract words:______

Are the words monosyllabic or polysyllabic?

  1. Monosyllabic words:______
  1. Polysyllabic words:______

Do the words have interesting connotations?

  1. Denotation means ______

Circle the word that has a negative connotation? Shack Home

  1. Connotation means ______

house, home, dwelling, mansion, cottage, trailer, shanty, slum, dump, tent, plantation
9. Which words do we use to insult someone? ______

10. Which words do we use to describe someone we like? ______

11. Which words do we use to describe a wealthy person? ______

ALWAYS use an adjective when describing diction and tone.
____ diction contributes to the ____ tone.

Diction and Tone ActivitiesName______

Now --- let’s try it

1.In the morning they came up out of the ravine and took to the road again. He'd carved the

boy a flute from a piece of roadside cane and he took it from his coat and gave it to him. The boy took

it wordlessly. After a while he fell back and after a while the man could hear him playing. A formless

music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called up from out of the ashes of its ruin. The man turned and looked back at him. He was lost in concentration. The man thought he seemed some sad and solitary changeling child announcing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in shire and village who does not know that behind him the players have all been carried off by wolves.

What are the specific words that create the feeling of the sentence? What words did the author use to create the feeling of the sentence?

______
What kind of words are these?

______diction contributes to the ______tone.
2. Everything smelled of damp and rot. In the first bedroom a dried corpse with the covers

about its neck. Remnants of rotted hair on the pillow. He took hold of the lower hem of the blanket and towed it off the bed and shook it out and folded it under his arm. He went through the bureaus and the closets. A summer dress on a wire hanger. Nothing. He went back down the stairs. It was getting dark. He took the boy by the hand and they went out the front door to the street.

What are the specific words that create the feeling of the sentence? What words did the author use to create the feeling of the sentence?

______
______diction contributes to the ______tone.

  1. An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. Lanyards at the wrist. Some of the pipes were threaded through with lengths of chain fitted at their ends with every manner of bludgeon. They clanked past, marching with a swaying gait like wind-up toys. Bearded, their breath smoking through their masks. Shh, he said. Shh. The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasseled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of trucksprings in some crude forge up-country. The boy lay with his face in his arms, terrified. They passed two hundred feet away, the ground shuddering lightly. Tramping. Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each.

What are the specific words that create the feeling of the sentence? What words did the author use to create the feeling of the sentence?

______

______diction contributes to the ______tone.

Remember………………………
What kind of words are there?
And how do they make you feel?

abhorring

acerbic

apathetic

apprehensive

desolate

despairing

desperate

detached

diabolic

disappointed

doubtful

enraged

evasive

fatalistic

fearful

forceful

foreboding

frantic

frightened

frustrated

furious

gloomy

grave

grim

harsh

hopeless

anxious

barren

cold

confining

discontented

distressed

drained

dreary

futile

haunting

hostile

insidious

melancholic

morose

suspenseful

tense

terrifying

threatening