3.3.9 Diction
Diction is the way the poet makes uses of language to communicate ideas. It includes such things as denotation, connotation, style, apostrophe and repetition.
By denotation is meant the dictionary meaning of a word, the literal meaning. The reader must establish, however, if there are two or more dictionary meanings for a word, and which of those meanings the poet is using. Take for example Emily Dickinson's "A Wounded Deer leaps highest".
A Wounded Deer - leaps highest -
I've heard the Hunter tell -
"Tis but the Ecstasy of death"
And then the Brake is still!
The word, "brake" has several meanings, namely, "a device to slow down motion", "a pump handle", "an instrument of torture" or "a sheltered area in a forest where ferns grow". It is obvious from the context of the poem that Dickinson is referring to the ferny grove. She has used the word denotatively and has not added any emotional meaning to it.
A poet, however, can use a word both denotatively and connotatively. In this case, the dictionary meaning is used but the word is being used in context to suggest something to the senses and the imagination. Connotation is one of the tools the writer has to create atmosphere, mood and tone.
Example:
We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late:
We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the sunset beware!
Not in silk nor in samet we lie, nor in curtained solemnity die
Among women who chatter and cry and children who mumble a prayer.
But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout and we tramp
With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in our hair.
The words, "silk" and "samet" and the phrase "curtained solemnity" are being used with their usual denotations or meanings but they carry a connotation of scorn, for the Saracens declare that they do not go to bed in such soft luxury. They boast of their toughness for they sleep by "the ropes of the camp", implying the lack of softness in their lives. With this connotative use of the words, the reader grasps the scorn with which the Saracens hold the Europeans through such a claim. "Silk" and "samet" and "curtained solemnity" are properties that belong to the physically weak, they claim. Moreover, obviously their women and children are also tough and strong and have strength of purpose like their husbands and fathers so they do not "chatter and cry" and "mumble" their prayers like the Christians. They cry out confidently to Allah.
Style
Style is the particular way a poet selects and puts words together. It is associated with the purpose behind the poem. One needs to ask: "Is the poet simply wanting to describe an event or scene, give an atmosphere or impression, express an attitude, be humorous, arouse emotions or persuade or, in fact, convey one or two of these purposes?" The answer lies in the fact that the choice of words and their arrangement in a poem are very much guided by the tone, that is, the attitude that the poet wishes to express about the topic. Description may be present or implied, atmosphere created, humour, emotions and persuasion expressed but they are all subservient to the poet's attitude towards the topic, so he/she will organise words in a way that allows the reader to share this attitude. Poets can draw on a wide diversity of language forms to communicate. There could be dialect present, nonsense words (in humorous poems), deliberately formal speech, or a playing with words as well as a particular use of imagery to suit the context of the poem.
In his poem, "Animals", Walt Whitman sets out be critical of the behaviour of his fellow humans which he finds hypocritical, anxious, judgmental and joyless. To show his disdain for this behaviour, he sets up a comparison between them and animals generally. He adopts a rhetorical style, which is restrained and eloquent and so allows him to imply humankind's hypocrisy, anxiety, judgmental character and joylessness by stating how animals do not behave. He achieves these ends by employing a type of balanced description, which allows for a repetition of a certain kind of sentence, such as a speaker could use with an audience, and he begins the poem as if it were a speech; he separates out the balanced related sentences with semi-colons in lines 2, 3 and 4 and then introduces a new kind of balanced sentence in lines 6, 7 and 8. The repetition of "they do not" and "not one..." underline his disgust with his fellow creatures' behaviour: their complaining, their obsessive fear of punishment for their misdeeds, their laying down of the law; their attachment to material things, their pride and lack of understanding of what it is to be worthy of respect or hardworking. In short, Whitman makes the strong point of the joyless life of a Christian with a very deliberate eloquent pose created with formal language and structure which underline the ridiculousness of the human behaviour he has witnessed in people who probably are so self-righteously Christian.
Example:
I think I could turn and live with animals.
They are so placid and self-contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied - not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
Consider the style of the following poem on lemons written by David Brooks. The description, to say the least, is unaffected. After all, it is only about a fruit that most people probably think of as a practical ingredient in culinary pursuits. Brooks, however, by drawing on facts and figures and by making careful appeals to the reader's senses through the use of images, is able to arouse the reader. Thus, he has been able to establish that the lemon, far from being uninteresting or unexciting, indulges the imagination and is able to lift the person out of ordinary experience: "an edible gold, a liquid spice", transforming the taste of food; its smell "like a cool breeze from the sea", its glow at night "like ghostly green lanterns." Old women can use the touch of the lemon and its smell to transport them to other climes and times. By selecting a simple style to describe his subject which is, indeed simple, and by communicating his belief in the romantic qualities of the lemon (his attitude or tone), through words like "ghostly green lanterns", "children, run[ning} about clutching lemons" "cool breeze" and "golden" he has established that the lemon is no ordinary fruit to be dismissed so readily to the kitchen and the cook.
Example:
Lemons
are the world's fruit,
the most democratic and versatile,
an edible gold, a liquid spice.
They whiten hands,
they remove stains from clothing,
they flavour a thousand dishes.
In the right climate,
with little encouragement,
they crop
seven times in a year.
Fresh picked
filling the air with their fragrance.
The smell
of a lemon
at midday
is like a cool breeze from the sea.
At dusk
from the grove
at the bottom of the farms
the lemons glow
like ghostly green lanterns.
Crows sing of lemons,
children
run about the hot yard
clutching lemons in their hands.
Old women
in black dresses
sit
with golden lemons in their laps,
their eyes closed,
their minds
far away with the scent of lemons.
Apostrophe
Apostrophe is another example of diction, is a direct address of a person or thing, present or absent. It could be done in the form of an exclamation. In the excerpt below, Thomas Hardy is addressing nature for affirmation but finds a disappointing answer. The apostrophe is an indicator of the poet entering into a heightened phase of feeling. Here Hardy is hurting deeply from the human reactions around and towards him, a seeming lack of unkindness from others. He escapes into the woods and addresses the different kinds of trees, hoping to find there a kindness that human nature does not seem to be able to give.
Pale beech and pine so blue,
Set in one clay,
Bough to bough cannot you
Live out your day?
When the rains skim and skip,
Why mar sweet comradeship,
Blighting with poison-drip
Neighbourly spray?
Then Alfred Lord Tennyson in "Break, break, break" addresses the waves breaking on the shore on a cold, grey day. He is in a state of mourning over the loss of a loved one. The constant motion of the waves breaking on the shore speak of life and time passing but bring him no joy. The poet can see and hear life pulsating around him but not that of the loved one who has gone forever. By addressing the sea, he is able to vent his feelings. See the short excerpt below:
Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
The poet could also just use the word, "O" as Shelley did in his "Ode to the West Wind" in which he sees the wind as a conjurer, an unseen power, that can move, shape, and transform.
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.
Repetition
Repetition is a helpful device to indicate feelings, enhance description, emphasise a point and link ideas. It could take the form of repeating words, phrases or complete lines. It could bind ideas together. See the excerpt below:
Example:
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blast the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
Thomas uses repetition in this excerpt to express the common source of life or impetus that runs through all things, whether human beings or nature, and causes them to be and to change. The repetition stresses the connection among all created things. Not only does he repeat the phrase, "the force that" but he repeats the word, "drives" which indicates that the power for life and death is not in the hand of the recipient but coming from somewhere else. The repetition of "mouth" and its use indicates that all created beings and things simply receive, not direct. He is "dumb", as he repeats in the stanzas that follow the above excerpt, to be able to explain this phenomenon.