Shreeya Garg Week 12 - The Power of Connotations
As APENG students, when examining a writer's diction, we often focus on a word’s connotation. As a quick refresher, a word’s denotation is the word’s literal meaning. In contrast, a word’s connotation refers to the positive or negative association of the word or its emotional implication.
But what really, is the impact of saying “thin” instead of “skinny” or “vintage” instead of “ancient?” Do people really notice connotations when not thoroughly analyzing a piece? For this week’s blog, I decided to evaluate the power of connotations by examining how politicians and businesses utilize the power of connotations for their own benefit.
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| Image Credits: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/28/donald-trump-congress-cap-candidate-age-column/1441913002/ |
Politicians often use words with strong connotations “in order to dictate the emotional response of” their audiences and persuade them to support their agenda (Engage Education Foundation). These connotations are immensely persuasive and powerful. For example, Trump once commented that immigrants, “pour in and infest our Country” (Wehener). In a later speech, he argued that people seeking asylum in America was “an invasion of our country” (Wehener). Trump intentionally uses words that “wound, degrade, and humiliate” immigrants, such as “infest” and “invasion” (Wehener) The strong negative connotations of these words foster fear of and hatred towards immigrants, helping raise zenophobic attitudes in America. Peter Wehener even argues that the connotative implication of Trump’s comments directly “influenced the white supremacist in El Paso who allegedly killed 22 people,” proving that connotations are impactful.
Similarly, while pushing for more restrictions on guns, Biden called guns a “weapon of war” (Newsweek). By identifying guns with “weapons,” and “war,” two words that have cynical implications, Biden’s comment evokes feelings of despair, destruction and fear. By using these negative connotations, Biden paints guns as a horrifying and inhumane weapon of destruction, which helps convince his audience that guns need to be banned.
Businesses are another example of how powerful connotations truly are. When advertising their products, businesses rely on the fact that humans “link new information with familiar knowledge” in a process called “associative recall” (Boyd). Natalie Boyd explains: “Thinking one thing gets a person thinking related thoughts. If those related thoughts are positive, that’s good news for your product.” Thus businesses will intentionally use positive connotations in their marketing and branding of their products. For example, skinny jeans are marketed as skinny jeans because the word “skinny” has a positive connotation, so the customers have a more positive outlook on this product, encouraging them to buy the jeans.
Similarly when advertising inexpensive projects, businesses use words like “budget-friendly,” but they refrain from using the word “cheap.” This is because cheap has a negative connotation, which makes customers feel as if they are getting an inferior product. By using words with positive connotations, they increase sales.
Clearly, connotations are extremely effective in subconsciously altering the way we view a certain topic. Thus, we must recognize the subconscious effects of the author’s connotations so that we can make informed decisions on how to respond.
Sources:
https://www.printmag.com/advertising/persuasive-advertising-connotations-associations-and-context/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/what-trump-has-done/595585/
https://www.newsweek.com/bidens-rhetoric-guns-far-reasonable-opinion-1678088
http://wiki.engageeducation.org.au/english/language-analysis/persuasive-techniques-2/words-with-connotations/
Hi Shreeya! I may not be a politician or a businesswoman, but I definitely recognize the impact of connotations in my day to day life especially when texting. It is impossible to derive someone's tone from text messages, so the connotation of a word is crucial in helping to get a point across. Personally, I rely greatly on a cheerful and easy-going tone so that people can tell that I'm not being serious. Far too many times, I have made people genuinely feel bad over things I didn't really care about, but my poor word choice made them believe that I was actually offended.
ReplyDeleteHello Shreeya, your blog post was actually very cool to read. I never stumbled on and thought about the fact that two words can mean the same thing but in different connotations. It was also really cool to see how this is practiced in the world today. I feel like language is such an interesting study because you can never learn enough of it. There are always ways to enhance writing to make it more appealing to the public, and this blog post sort of proves that.
ReplyDeleteHi Shreeya! After deeply reading through your blog a couple of times in a repeated manner, I can identify how many businesses and politicians work hard towards using their own connotations towards benefitting themselves. As they are attempting to persuade an audience towards making persuasive and powerful comments, either the positive or negative connotations that adhere to the idealizations of fear and hatred towards various immigrants raises many attitudes that might be gone against in the country of America. As there are more rules being established towards restricting guns or weapons at war could have various implications that can evoke feelings of fear and destruction because of the way they try to convince their audience. By preventing the public from feeling that they are purchasing an inferior product, the author can list the subconscious effects that are related to the author’s connotations.
ReplyDeleteHi Shreeya! It's interesting to see how a politicians choices in their speech are so reflective of their agenda or political stance. It's also interesting to see how the differences between the way that businesses and politicians promote themselves are based on the different reactions that they're hoping to receive from their audience. However, it seems that those who do try to use the connotations to words to promote a certain message or product always use positive connotations to raise their own status, and negative connotations for their opposition or competition. While I don't necessarily think there's anything ethically questionable about employing these practices, I agree that it is important to be informed and aware of them to avoid making bad decisions.
ReplyDeleteHey Shreeya, connotations are crucial aspects of how communication and comprehension operate, as different people may take words in with different predispositions and biases that influence their connotations of the word, based on the personal circumstances and experiences they may have with them. Selecting the optimal series of words to convey a particular message is often a crucial goal of speaking and writing, which is why I totally agree with the idea that the usage of particular words and phrases could indicate the purpose and intent of various messages and who the message is targeted at. The nuances in the understood message can be almost entirely reflected by the connotations of words utilized in such a message, as well as different aspects like tone and presentation. All of these aspects combined are what make communication such a complex and interesting art form, whether it be in the simple discussion between friends or the announcements of a leader to their millions of people.
ReplyDeleteHey Shreeya, I agree that connotations are significant aspects of how we communicate with others and our perception of others. Often times, I have been in a situation where the connotations of my words have been different from what I actually meant, due to a poor choice of words or tone. This can be especially harmful, as it leads to misunderstandings and tension. But sometimes, I will add a specific connotation to my words to make sure that the person listening to me understands the underlying purpose of what I'm communicating. It serves many different purposes in communication, as you pointed out, so thank you for discussing that. I look forward to reading more from you.
ReplyDeleteConnotations often are more important then the words themselves in my opinion. There have been so many situations that I have seen where the words themselves have the opposite meaning of the connotation. If these messages were translated over to text, it is almost guaranteed that the message would have been lost in translation. Sarcasm is one such example: there is no possible way for such a idea to be translated over text, but the message is crystal clear when my words are literally dripping with sarcasm. The worst part of connotations is how someone can make something nonthreatening and relatively safe with several inflammatory terms that have highly negative connotations: someone good can be raked through the mud like this. Connotations are a double-edged sword and it is up to the wielder to cause any events.
ReplyDeleteHi Shreeya, connotations are a very interesting concept to analyze. We've almost always used different connotations of words unconsciously from a very young age. Just in the last few years have we learned the word to describe it with. In psychology, the framing effect is a term that has a lot to do with connotations of words. Essentially it means the phrasing of a question has a lot to do with the response some gives to it. This is very important when running psychological evaluations and questionnaires. Connotations, when used incorrectly can lead to unforeseen biases. Thank you for sharing.
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