Lexical layers 2: connotation
In my last post, I talked about the importance of delving
beyond the surface meaning of new vocabulary to try and help learners
understand where and when it's appropriate to use a particular word or phrase.
I looked at the concepts of register and genre, and how certain words are more
typical of particular contexts and stand out as odd (or 'marked') when they're
used elsewhere.
A couple of the comments on that post questioned how
teachers can find time to cover all this extra information when there's already
so much else to fit in. To which my first reaction is perhaps that quality is
as important as quantity – there's no point memorizing a whole load of words if
you don't know how to use them appropriately! But also, I realized that it's
easy when you focus on a specific aspect of learning for it to get blown out of
proportion. While I'm saying that understanding beyond the surface of meaning
of vocab is really important, I'm not saying that learners and teachers need to
go into all this detail with all the words they come across and certainly not
all at the same time. Lots of words are fairly neutral and uncontroversial, so
it may only be the odd word or phrase here and there that comes with a 'health
warning' and needs some extra explanation. And those layers may be peeled back gradually with repeated exposures,
adding in a note about register or other kinds of usage as vocab starts to
shift from learners' passive to active vocab (pointing out a new aspect of a
word is a great way to make revision seem less repetitive). Nonetheless, for
those words which are marked in some way, exploring those extra layers can be
really key to vocab development.
In this post, the layer I want to explore is connotation
or the feeling and attitude of the speaker that particular word choices convey.
Take a look at these words and phrases that all refer to a person who's physically larger
than normal – what images do they conjure up, who could you apply them to and
how would they feel about it?
Adjectives like these tend to be at the more obvious end
of the connotation scale, but all kinds of words reveal something about the
user and their attitude towards the person or thing they're talking about. To
take an example in the news fairly recently, would you describe a person at a
climate strike event like the one below as an activist, a campaigner, a
protestor, a demonstrator, an agitator,
a militant or maybe a troublemaker or even an uncooperative crusty*?
All these words have slightly different connotations,
both in and of themselves, and also depending on who they're used by and
applied to. The learner who looks up the equivalent in their L1 on Google
translate and randomly picks one of the options they're offered could find
themselves getting across a very different message from the one they intended.
Incidentally, I looked up activist
on Google translate and, ignoring the translations, it offers the English
synonyms militant, zealot, protestor, radical, extremist and netroots … the last of which I'd never heard before but apparently
comes from a blend of grassroots and internet to describe campaigners who
communicate their message online (check out definitions here and here)
… which is a neat word, but clearly has
layers of meaning (not to mention lexicogrammar) that you'd need to decode before
using it.
Teachers and learners often love the idea of a thesaurus
to help expand their vocabulary, but as the example above illustrates, it's a
path fraught with danger. Many of the thesaurus tools available online are
aimed at L1 speakers of English who are looking for inspiration. It's assumed
they'll be familiar with most of the synonyms that crop up and have some idea when
it's appropriate (or not) to use them. They are not designed for learners of
English and even if they link through to definitions, they'll likely again be
written for L1 speakers in a style that won't be of much help to the average
learner. Many learner's dictionaries also have thesaurus facilities of some
kind, often in the form of clickable synonyms at the bottom of an entry. These can
be more helpful, in part, because they're likely to focus on more useful,
high-frequency words rather than the often obscure results of L1 tools. What's
really important though is that learners understand the importance of clicking
through to the definitions to check how the synonym may differ in usage from
their starting point. Learner's dictionaries often show connotation through
labels such as disapproving or offensive or humorous. Alternatively, these restrictions may be incorporated
into the definition itself, e.g. "used to describe someone you disapprove
of …". Or subtler differences may
be shown through the choice of examples. I suspect, however, many learners skim
over these important caveats, focusing only on the basic meaning (or
denotation). Which is why work in class on noticing and understanding the significance
of this kind of information is so important.
Of course, though, dictionaries and other reference
sources can only give very general guidance on typical usage. People all use
and understand language differently. If you're female, for example, how do you
feel about people referring to you as a woman,
a lady, a girl or a bird? Does it
depend on who they are? Have your feelings, like mine, shifted slightly over
time? Whether or not you perceive a particular word or expression as formal,
informal, slang, old-fashioned, offensive, condescending, complimentary,
humorous, appropriate or inappropriate will come down to your social, cultural,
regional, educational and professional background, your age, your gender and potentially
a whole host of other factors … which I'll talk about in my next post.
* uncooperative crusties was an expression used by UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to describe people at a climate strike event in London in Oct 2019 (link to BBC news report here)
Labels: connotation, dictionaries, synonyms, thesaurus, vocabulary
3 Comments:
Hi Julie,
Thanks for writing these posts. I discovered this kid's thesaurus the other day, which while it doesn't completely solve the problems above, seems to be a useful halfway house: https://kids.wordsmyth.net/we/?ent=beautiful Have you seen it before?
Sandy
Thanks for the link, Sandy, I hadn't seen this. At first glance, I quite like the fact that the synonyms are divided up rather than just all in one long list, although it's not quite clear what the criteria are for making something a 'synonym', a 'similar word' or a 'related word'. And judging by the definitions, it's clearly aimed at L1-English speakers rather than learners.
Julie
Just thanks for your description
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