Determining Author’s Tone

1. DIDLS Determining Author’s Tone

2. Tone • The writer's or speaker's attitude to the subject and the audience. • Understanding tone depends on the reader's appreciation (knowledge) of diction (word choice), imagery, details, language, and syntax (sentence structure). • To misinterpret tone is to misinterpret meaning.

3. Shift in Tone • Good authors rarely are monotone. A speaker's attitude can shift on a topic. • Watch for the following to recognize shifts in tone: • Key words (but, yet, nevertheless, however, although) • Punctuation(dashes, periods, colons) • Stanza and paragraph divisions • Changes in line and stanza or in sentence length • Sharp contrasts in diction

4. "D"IDLS --Diction • The connotation (meaning or implication) of the word choice. Words that describe tone—adjectives, nouns, verbs—positive/negative words • WHY are the words chosen

5. Become sensitive to word choices • To walk • To say • To laugh • Self-confident • House • Upset • to saunter, to stroll, to amble, to stagger, to hike • to reveal, to articulate, to declare, to state, to exclaim, to shout, to mention • to guffaw, to chuckle, to titter, to giggle, to cackle, to snicker, to roar • proud, conceited, egotistical, stuck up, haughty, smug, complacent, arrogant, condescending • home, hut, shack, mansion, cabin, chalet, abode, dwelling, shanty, domicile, residence • annoyed, vexed, worried, cross, indignant, uneasy Neutral Positive and Negative Connotation

6. Practice • Come up with as many specific words to replace the following vague word. You can use both positive and negative connotations: Happy Sad Funny You have 1 min. and 30 sec. to complete all 3 words.

7. D"I"DLS --Images • The use of vivid descriptions or figures of speech that appeal to sensory experiences (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch)helps to create the author's tone • WHAT is the author trying to evoke in the mind’s eye?

8. Practice With a partner alternate reading the quotes and explain why the image in parenthesis describes the quote. You have 30 seconds with each quote. • Smiling, the boy fell dead. (shocking) • You do me wrong to take me out of the grave Thou art a soul in bliss But I am bound upon a wheel of fire That mine own tears do scald like molten lead. (horrific) • My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. (restrained) • He clasps the crag with crooked hands. (dramatic)

9. DI"D"LS -- Details • Facts that are included or omitted, opinion, description of action • WHAT do the details indicate about the author’s tone?

10. Practice • How might an adolescent decide to include or omit details when reporting a minor car accident to his/her parents, a police officer, or his/her friends at school? • Each partner has 1 minute to relate the details of the accident. • Partner A you tell the details as if you were telling a police officer • Partner B you tell the details as if you were telling your friend

11. DID"L"S -- Language • Language is the entire body of words used in a text, not just isolated bits of diction. It is important to develop a vocabulary that describes language. • Different from tone, these words describe the force or quality of the diction, images, details AND how the work is written, not the attitude or tone. • WHAT are the characteristics of the words used? HOW could the language be described?

12. Words to Describe Language Academic Arcane Artificial Bland Bombastic Casual Cerebral Colloquial Colorless Concrete Connotative Cryptic Cultured Detached Emotional Erudite Esoteric Euphemistic Exact Figurative Formal Grotesque Homespun Idiomatic Insipid Jargon Learned Literal Moralistic Obscure Obtuse Offensive Ordinary Pedantic Picturesque Informal Plain Poetic Precise Pretentious Provincial Scholarly Sensuous Simple Slang Symbolic Trite Vulgar

13. Syntax (Sentence Structure) • How a speaker or author constructs a sentence affects what the audience understands • HOW do the sentences affect the mood? WHAT is the author trying to get the reader to do—slow down, speed up, suspense, etc.?

14. Describe sentence structure by considering the following: • Sentence length (short, medium, or long?) • Sentence beginnings (variety or repetitive pattern?) • Arrangement of ideas in a sentence (most to least important, etc.) • Type of sentence (declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamatory) • Type of sentence (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex) • Loose sentence (Ex: We ate dinner that evening after the thunderstorm.)

15. Periodic sentence (Ex: That evening, after the thunderstorm, we ate dinner.) • Balanced sentence (phrases/clauses balance each other in likeness of structure, meaning, or length: e.g., He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.) • Natural order sentence (subject first, predicate second) • Inverted order sentence (predicate first, subject second) • Split order sentence (Ex: In California oranges grow.)

16. Juxtaposition (normally unassociated ideas, words, phrases are placed next to one another) • Parallel structure (structural similarity between sentences or parts of a sentence) • Repetition(words, sounds, ideas are repeated to create emphasis) • Rhetorical question (expects no answer)

17. Practice • Discuss with your partner the sentence structure in the following example. How does the author effectively use syntax within the sentence? "Next morning when the first light came into the sky and the sparrows stirred in the trees, when the cows rattled their chains and the rooster crowed and the early automobiles went whispering along the road, Wilbur awoke and looked for Charlotte."

18. Explanation of Syntax • The sentence follows the sun, the birds, the cows, then the cars. Finally, when the world is awake, Wilbur gets up to look for Charlotte. • The movement of the sentence takes us from the sunlight, which not only begins the day but represents the farthest removed from humanity, down through the birds, cows, and roosters -- coming ever closer to us -- until it gets to the cars, driven by human beings.

19. The sentence is periodic, moving from the opening adverb phrase through the two successive adverb clauses, the second longer than the first, to the final main clause -- the main focal and grammatical point of the sentence. • It may be helpful to note that in the first subordinate clause, the subjects are the sun and the sparrows – natural and free-ranging -- while in the second, the subjects are domesticated cows in chains and a rooster. Then humans in automobiles. • So by the time Wilbur awakes and goes to look for Charlotte, the scene has been fully set.

20. Let us suppose that White had changed the order of the sentence to • "Wilbur awoke and looked for Charlotte when the first light came into the sky and the sparrows stirred in the trees, when the cows rattled their chains and the rooster crowed and the early automobiles went whispering along the road.“ • When the sentence is ordered in this way, the emphasis on Wilbur's action is forgotten by the time we reach the end of the sentence.