Chapter 10 Using Language Effectively

Using Language Effectively

Language and Meaning

• Understand the relationship between language and meaning

  • Because all language is symbolic, it has the power to engage our emotions as well as promote understanding. Language is rich in both denotative and connotative meaning.

Using Language That Is Clear and Accurate

• Choose language that is specific, concrete, precise, and clear

  • Good style means promoting the audience’s understanding and acceptance through the use of effective language.

  • Using language that is familiar to listeners, as well as concrete, specific, and precise, will help you achieve clarity, which is essential to a good speaking style.

  • It is important to avoid crowding sentences with cliches and empty words. Also avoid constructing sentences that are overly complex and ahrd for listeners to follow.

Using Language That is Active and Interesting

• Choose language that is lively and vivid, using appeals to the senses and figures of speech.

  • Listeners find active language more engaging than passive language

  • Figures of speech, such as metaphors, antithesis, and alliteration, make language more interesting.

Using Appropriate and Ethical Language

• Understand how language choices relate to audience expectations

  • Language should be appropriate to the situation-well adapted to the setting, the listeners’ expectations and levels of understanding, and the constraints of the occasion.

Responding Critically to a Speaker’s Style

• Avoid overreacting to style by focusing on the substance of a speaker’s ideas

  • The critical listener guards against being swayed by style alone

  • The critical listener does not respond to emotionally charged words without considering the evidence and reasoning supporting the argument

  • The critical listener is not persuaded by a speech that substitutes style for substance

Key Terms

Alliteration - A repetitive pattern of initial sounds in a sequence of words, used to gain attention and reinforce an idea

Antithesis - A stylistic device in which two contrasting ideas are places in opposition through the use of parallel phrases of clauses

Cliches - Trite, the overused expressions

Commenting modifiers - Modifiers that attempt to boost the meaning of a word but reveal nothing new

Connotative meanings - The subjective or emotional meanings associated with particular words or phrases

Defining modifiers - Modifiers that provide new, needed information

Denotative meaning - Meaning that is considered literal, objective, or universally accepted

Figures of speech - Stylistic devices, such as metaphors or personification, that heighten the beauty of one’s language or make that language or make that language clearer, more meaningful, or more memorable

Gendered language - Language that reinforces or perpetuates gender stereotypes

Irony - The sue of language to imply a meaning that is the total opposite of the literal meaning of a word or expression

Metaphor - AN implicit comparison in which two dissimilar objects are compared

Oral style - Language that is chosen with a listener in mind, characterized by short, simple, straightforward sentences and familiar word choices and repetition; generally more information/conversational than a written style

Oxymoron - An expression that presents, in combination, seemingly contradictory terms

Parallelism - The use of a series of sentences with similar length and structure to signify the equality of ideas

Personification - A description of an inanimate form or things as if it were human

Repetition - Repeating, word for word, key elements presented in a message

Restatement - Rephrasing, in slightly different language or sentence construction, the key elements in a message

Rhetorical questions - Questions posed by a speaker to stimulate audience interest and thought, not to solicit information or answers

Sensory appeals - Vivid language that attempts to evoke one of our five senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or feeling

Simile - A figurative comparison made explicit by using the word like or as

Style - A speaker’s choice and use of language

Technical language - Any language that has precise meaning within a particular field or endeavor