Descriptive Language

Descriptive Language

Why is Descriptive Language important?? • It responds to our senses: taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound. • It helps make paragraphs come to life for the reader.

An example: • The house sat in the middle of town. It belonged to the old man. He went to work everyday and returned home at 6:00pm. His wife made him dinner. He then read the paper and went to bed.

Revised with descriptive language: • The red trimmed three-story house sat in the middle of the tiny town. The old man who had gray hair, with little curls at the end, owned it. He used a self made intricate designed cane to walk to work at the rustic old hardware store with squeaky boards that sounded like a rocking chair when stepped upon. When the old man returned home at dusk, his wife made the normal juicy steak, lumpy mashed potatoes, garden green beans with cheese, and sweet warm apple pie. He read about the town gossip from Eleanor Dribble in the Morgan County paper, and then resided to his cotton flannel sheets, with downy-feathered pillows.

Adjectives Figurative Language Simile Metaphor Adverbs Personification Imagery To make paragraphs come to life, you can use the following:

Adjectives--anything you can sense about a noun is described with an adjective. They give specific details about nouns. • Sight: colors, shapes, sizes Example: The green grass. • Sound: types and volume Example: The rattling wind. • Smell: scents and strengths Example: The potato is putrid. • Taste: flavors and strengths Example: The spicy hot dog. • Touch: textures and temperatures Example: The rough wall.

Adverbs--give more information and tell us the quality of how something is done or how it occurs. • Example: The girl ran to the store. • How? Slowly, Quickly • When? Yesterday, Today • Example: She was tired. • Here we are asking how much about the adjective. • Very, Not, Too

Similes--comparison’s of two unlike things using the word like or as. Used to intensify emotional responses and create vivid images. • Example: The hood of my car is hot. • The surface of my car is hot like an iron. • Example: That emerald is green. • The color of that emerald is like grass. • His hands were like wild birds. John Updike “Ex-basketball player”

Metaphor--a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that have something in common. Do Not use like or as!! • Example: That car is a dream. (perfect, beautiful) • Example: Time marches on. (steadily, constantly, deliberately) • Example: I want to get off this merry-go-round of stress. (never-ending, confusing, giddy) • Example: Written by Carl Sandbury: • The sky of gray is eaten in six places, rag holes stand out. It is an army blanket and the sleeper slept to near the fire.

Figurative Language--expanded beyond its ordinary literal meaning. It uses comparisons to achieve new affects, to provide fresh insights, or to express a relationship between things essentially unlike. • The moon like to a silver bow new-bent in heaven • William Shakespeare • Like a lobster boiled, the morn from black to red began to burn • Samuel Butler

Personification--a figure of speech in which human characteristics are assigned to nonhuman things. • William Wordsworth: • The green field sleeps in the sun • Like an army defeated, the snow hat retreated

Imagery--words and phrases that appeal to the reader’s senses of sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, or internal feelings. • Jesse Stuart, from “Dark Winter” • The sun is up today, Water drips from the eves of the house. Icicles melt into water and drip-drip from nine in the morning till three in the evening. White clouds scud the sky. Winter has started breakin’ up. Warm thaw winds blow through the bare Kentucky trees. One can feel them, warm soft winds, winds that remind us of rain.

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References: • http://www.bhsu.edu/artssciences/writingcenter/faqfall1999/descsm.html • http://www.mtsac,edu/~jjenkins/desc.html • http://www.eureka-usd.k12.ca.us/ojhs/ Core8/Lewis/descriptivelanguage.htm

Descriptive Language