1. "English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England!” –Homer Simpson
Diction Check List
"English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England!” –Homer Simpson

2. Diction definition
Author’s carefully selected words to produce a certain effect or meaning

3. Level of Language High/formal language
Middle/colloquial (this is where you need to be)
Low/slang

4. Connotative vs. Neutral
Connotation-emotional response a word uses
Denotation- dictionary meaning

5. Stand up quiz: Is the word positive, negative, or neutral?
Assembly
Positive
Group
Neutral
Mob
Negative

6. Is the word positive, negative, or neutral?
Demand
Negative
Asked
Neutral
Inquired
Positive

7. Euphemistic Wording
Euphemism- a less unpleasant way of saying something unpleasant
Example: You don’t want to say… The battle field was strewn with blood and you could smell death.
Instead you would say… These were the casualties of war.

8. Regional Dialect
Regional or social variety of language or language particular to members of a group, ethnicity, etc.
Example: “mistuh” “the loo” “wazup”
Give me an example…

9. Contemporary/current Archaic (old, out dated, unused)
Time Period
Contemporary/current
Archaic (old, out dated, unused)

10. Juxtaposition (contrasting)
Puns- words with double meanings are interchanged
Example: He made a grave mistake and ended up dead.
Overstatement
Example: All Greeks hated outsiders.
Understatement
Example: That hurricane was a bit windy.

11. Juxtaposition continued…
Litote- an affirmation statement understated by placing NO or NOT in front
Example: It was not pleasant picking up the dog poop 
Bathos- sudden drop in level
Example: He was the ascending employee: unctuous, fastidious, ever dutiful to his esteemed employer. In short, he was a suck up.

12. Continued…
Paradox- a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true
a self-contradictory statement that at first seems true
an argument that apparently derives self-contradictory conclusions by valid deduction from acceptable premises
Example: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

13. Epithet -A term used to characterize a person or thing, such as rosy-fingered in rosy-fingered dawn or the Great in Catherine the Great. OR
- A term used as a descriptive substitute for the name or title of a person, such as The Great Emancipator for Abraham Lincoln.

14. Apostrophe- directly addressing a person or idea which isn’t present
“Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again.”
-“Sound of Silence” Beatles
Allegory- a fable or short moral story (often animals are the characters)
Animal Farm or Aesop’s Fable’s