Showing papers on "Connotation published in 1973"

Lexicography and generative grammar ii: context and connotation in the dictionary *

Abstract: One might make the claim with some justice that every act a speaker performs of choosing a word in a discourse is an act of propaganda. Sometimes the propaganda is deliberate, sometimes unconscious; sometimes overt, sometimes covert. But generally if we are at all careful speakers or writers, when we use a word we hope it means what we want it to mean: no more no less; we hope to create a specific effect. I am, of course, speaking only about content words, and ,probably, to be fair, only a subset of these, those that involve judgments by speaker or hearers about the subject of the discourse. But in this category, it is extremely difficult to avoid “loading” your language-you must express your opinion willy-nilly, and the only questions to be asked are: what is your opinion? and, how strongly do you want to express it? On the basis of the answers to these questions you will decide what words you want to use. And obviously, the wrong choice can be dangerous, sometimes only to the extent of frustrating the speaker and confusing his listeners, as he tries to make his point; but we all can think of cases where the wrong choice of a word threw politics into u-pheavals or influenced large classes of people in undesired ways; or, conversely, where the precisely right word accomplished what armies could not. So one must know how one’s words will be received. The only problem is that one is not necessarily born with this knowledge, nor does one necessarily even acquire it fully in the normal course of language acquisition. And it often happens that even a speaker who considers himself relatively sophisticated in the arts of word-magic will be uncertain about the precise meaning of a particular word: is it good? bad? strong? weak? does it make special assumptions? is it neutral or somehow ‘loaded‘? pedantic? casual? To put it in a nutshell-what is the likely reaction to the use of this word, and how would this change if another, more or less synonymous, word were substituted? Of course, what we find as we hunt around seeking effect or safety is that there are no synonyms. Every word has its own ambience, and we must pick carefully among the choices at hand-there are right ones and wrong ones, and seemingly trivial distinctions loom large when important matters are at issue. So what is our speaker (or writer) to do? He doesn’t want to be an ignoramus, or a firebrand, or a bore, or a pedant . . . he wants to say just what he means, but he isn’t sure which word of several related ones to select. Where does he go for advice? About the only avenue open to him is the dictionary. The dictionary, he