Language Use:
Denotation, connotation-- the denotation of both these words is "to signify;" however, there is a major difference between them. The denotation of a word is its primary meaning -- its barest adequate definition. The connotations of the work are the attributes commonly associated with it, the meaning the reader brings to the word.
For instance, "father" denotes one who has begotten; it connotes male sex, prior existence, greater experience, affections, guidance, etc. Another example is the word "ugly" -- it denotes what is unpleasing to our sight; it connotes repellent effect or immunity from the dangers peculiar to beauty.
Writers will spend much of their time finding words for their work that uses denotation and connotation to their fullest.
Concrete versus abstract language:
since poets search for the exact words to echo the sense of their poems, they tend to stay away from abstract language; throwing words like faith, hope, trust, or love into a poem without either imagery or concrete nouns to explain what these terms mean is the work of a lazy poet. If we truly believe that the poet's job is to help shape the chaos of our lives, then specificity is a must.
"If I stepped out of my body/ I would break into blossom," writes the poet James Wright in his poem "The Blessing."
A lazy poet would have written, "I felt great love/ at the sight of the two horses."
Figurative language
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metaphor--an expression of similarity of dissimilarity in which a direct, nonliteral substitution or identity is made between on thing and another: My car is a lemon, or hope is a bird. | |
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personification--lends human qualities to abstractions and animate or inanimate objects, designed to evoke emotion: "not even the rain has such small hands" e.e. cummings. | |
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symbol--a work, phrase or image that represents something literal and concrete and yet maintains a complex set of abstract ideas and values: A cross too heavy to bear. | |
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allegory--allegorical characters tend to be literal, one-dimensional, sharply outlined, and rigid in the order of ideas they represent: Mr. Scrooge in "The Christmas Carol. | |
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paradox--tells its truth through a self-contradicting assertion in the whole of its meaning, or an assertion that contradicts popular opinion: Many Christians maintain that through dying they are reborn. | |
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irony-names or states one thing but intends another which is conveyed through the tone of the persona or contradiction between words and the matter at hand: In Oedipus, he wants to punish the murderer of his father unaware that he is the murderer. |
