Mastering Diction and Tone Analysis

1. Diction • Whenever you think of diction, you’re thinking about word choice. • So, you can’t write, “the author uses diction here” because you’re saying “the author uses word choice here.” • It is the type of words that matter.

2. Diction • TIP #1: • Look for the consistent use of words that reveal tone Pots rattled in the kitchen where Momma was frying corn cakes to go with vegetable soup for supper, and the homey sounds and scents cushioned me as I read of Jane Eyre in the cold English mansion of a colder English gentleman. -- Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

3. Diction • TIP #2 Looking at diction means looking at specific words and discussing their uses. • Let’s look at a particular passage that describes a room. Find words that indicate what type of room this is.

4. Diction How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the floor.” --Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

5. TONE • Tone is always: Author Subject Narrator Attitude Towards TIP #1 You must always explain both the subject and the attitude.

6. TONE • We went with sandwiches, thick, poor-man’s ham from Aldi’s supermarket, slapped onto wheat bread and slathered with a thin film of mayonnaise. • MawiAsgedom, Of Beetles and Angels… • What is the narrator’s attitude towards the sandwiches and which words indicate the tone?

7. TONE • TIP #2 Use the right word. When describing diction or tone, don’t use these words when discussing professional writing (don’t evaluate the writing): Good, bad, specific, vague, weak, wonderful, beautiful, negative, positive…