Connotation and Denotation California State （内涵和外延加州）.pdf

Page 1 of 8 Connotation and Denotation Connotation and Denotation Connotation and Denotation are two principal methods of describing the meanings of words. Connotation refers to the wide array of positive and negative associations that most words naturally carry with them, whereas denotation is the precise, literal definition of a word that might be found in a dictionary. Cars of the 1960’s Thunderbird, Falcon, Charger, Comet, Mustang, Barracuda. Cars of the 1970’s Rabbit, Pinto, Colt, Civic, Starlet, Gremlin. Introduce the idea of connotation, defining it as the associations that people make with a word. You can contrast connotation with the denotative value of a word, its more literal meaning, and give an example of a word (such as chicken) Connotation is the emotional and Denotation is the strict imaginative association surrounding a word. dictionary meaning of a word. Visiting Seema Srivastava’s Argumentative Writing class recently, I witnessed a very useful exercise for teaching students the difference between connotation and denotation. Under the rubric of teaching students about Pathos, or appeal to emotion, in the Aristotelian Pathos/Ethos/Logos triangle, she briefly described denotation as the literal meaning and connotation as the emotional weight of a word, comparing cheap to inexpensive as an example. She noted that non-native speakers often have difficulty with connotation, while native speakers may use the words appropriately though unconsciously. She then presented students the following groups of words and asked them to rank the words in order from positive to negative. Group 1 Thin, slim, lanky, skinny, gaunt, slender Group 2 Aggressive, assertive, domineering, dynamic,