Lesson Plans

Assignment to have been completed: Students should have read “Chapter Three – Denotation and Connotation,” 674-680 in Perrine’s Literature. They should also have written out complete answers to all five questions under Reviewing Chapter Three.

Objectives:

1. To define sound, denotation, and connotation
2. To demonstrate understanding of those terms by responding to an exercise and three poems

Activities:

• A. Review the function of denotation and connotation. This review should be brief (5 min.) since it is unlikely that it is new to students. However, do solicit questions so that students may identify aspects of the lesson they do not fully understand.

  • 1. Identify the component parts of words.
    • a. Sound: a combination of tones and noises to which meaning is attached
    • b. Denotation: the dictionary meaning or meanings of a word
    • c. Connotation: what the word suggests beyond what it expresses, the tool by which the poet concentrates or enriches meaning
  • 2. Sometimes the poet intends that more than one denotation of a word apply (This is called polysemy.
  • 3. Poets seek the most meaningful words and may choose them from a variety of areas and levels.
  • 4. Only a skillful poet can select a word from a greatly different area or level and incorporate it into a poem created from words drawn from another area or level.
  • 5. The reader of poetry must develop a sense of language, a feeling for words by extensively using his or her dictionary and by doing extensive reading.

• B. Have each student generate a list of 10 words that have multiple denotations and/or connotations.

• C. Divide the class into six groups and direct the students to the exercises on pp. 691-692. Allow the groups about five minutes to complete the task of responding to all six exercises. Have each group also select their favorite three examples from the members’ word lists to share with the class.

• D. Have each group select a spokesperson; then, have the first group report out on the first exercise, the second group on the second exercise, the third group on the third, and so forth. (Use the listed responses below to help guide their responses if they become stuck.) As the groups report, encourage the entire discuss how personal experiences and emotions affect the connotations of words. How do shred or diverse cultural experiences also affect connotations? How can multiple denotations of a word be used effectively in a poem? How can the political or social connotations of some words trigger controversy and lead to heated discussions?

  • 1. Which word in each group has the most “romantic” connotations? a) horse, steed, nag; b) king, ruler, tyrant, autocrat; c) Chicago, Pittsburgh, Samarkand, Birmingham.

  • 2. Which word in each group is the most emotionally connotative? a) female, parent, mother, dam; b) offspring, children, progeny; c) brother, sibling.

  • 3. Arrange the words in each group from most positive to most negative in connotation: a) skinny, thin, gaunt, slender; b) prosperous, loaded, moneyed, opulent; c) brainy, intelligent, egg-headed, smart.

  • 4. Which of the following should you be less offended at being accused of? a) having acted foolishly, b) having acted like a fool

  • 5. In any competent piece of writing, the possibly multiple denotations and connotations of ht words used are controlled by context. The context screens out irrelevant meanings while allowing the relevant meanings to pass through. What denotation has the word fast in the following contexts: Fast runner, fast color, fast living, fast day? What are the varying connotations of these four denotations of fast?

    fast runner: speedy, quick positive

    fast color: fixed, won’t wash out positive

    fast living: dissolute, detrimentally self-indulgent negative

    fast day: giving up food and or drink, self-denying positive

  • 6. In the following examples the denotation of the word white remains the same, but the connotations differ. Explain. (a) The young princess had blue eyes, golden hair, and a breast as white as snow. b) Confronted with the evidence, the false princess turned as white as a sheet.

    In the first example, white suggests rare beauty; in the second it suggests intense fear.

• E. Have one of the students read “Cross” by Langston Hughes, p. 682 aloud. Ask the students the following questions about the poem. You may use the responses in bold italics to help you gauge their answers.

  • 1. What different denotations does the title have? What connotations are linked to each of them?

    Cross may mean (in biology) “a hybrid,” by way of metaphor “a burden” (a cross to bear) or adjectivally “angry.”

    The speaker is literally a cross between a white and a black, connotatively a mix that belongs to neither race. His parental heritage is his cross or burden (arising from Christ’s crucifixion on a cross) because neither culture accepts him as its own. He has been, at some time cross or “angry” about that situation.

  • 2. The language in this poem, such as “old man” (1, 3, 9), “ma” (10), and “gonna” (11), is plain, and even colloquial. Is it appropriate to the subject? Why?

    The language is appropriate to a speaker who was no doubt raised in poverty and without formal education.

  • 3. Substitute alternative words for several words in the poem. Use a different level of diction for your substitutions, especially grand or impressive words for the simple ones. Have the substitutions weakened or strengthened the poem?

Assignment for next class meeting: Write a fully developed paragraph to answer this question: How would you respond to the charge that life is too much about “getting and spending” and that “we are out of tune” with what really matters.