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Engl217 “Close Reading” Skills: Word Choice and Figures of Speech
For this exercise, read with a pen or pencil and a dictionary close to hand. After your first reading, read again and annotate the passage as fully as possible. At the end, make a claim.
DICTION & WORD CHOICE
➢ Look up words you do not know. Write meanings in the margins.
➢ Mark (circle or underline) key words and note how each one is used in the sentence.
➢ Look up the full range of meanings of key words: list all that pertain.
➢ Select the connotations of the word that are most appropriate in the context.
➢ Look for connections with related words and their range of pertinent meanings.
➢ Consider the writer’s choice of words: why choose this word and not another—either a synonym with slightly different connotations or a more common word?
➢ Consider antonyms and the words not chosen: often comparison with the words not there helps reveal the meaning of the word used. For example, in “Young Goodman Brown” we came to understand “earthly imperfections” as meaning “mortality” by thinking of the opposite terms, “heavenly perfection” or “immortality.”
➢ Look up the history (or etymology) of significant words. Often knowing the history of how a word changes and the linguistic root of a word (e.g. Latin or Anglo-Saxon) helps explain the connotations and range of meanings of a given word.
FIGURES OF SPEECH: Identify metaphors, puns, double-meanings, ironic phrases
➢ Start with the literal meanings of the figure. Ask yourself how A is like or unlike B.
➢ For example, in the phrase, “my love is like a rose,” how is love like a rose? Is it beautiful and pleasing? But does it also have sharp thorns and quickly fade?
➢ Consider which of the shared attributes (beautiful/short-lived, pleasing/painful) are most pertinent in the context of the passage. Does the figurative meaning include opposites (a paradox)? Does it contain a primary meaning (an overtone) and a secondary meaning (an undertone)?
➢ Decide how the theme of the passage changes with each of these possible meanings.
MAKE A CLAIM: After annotating the passage, make a claim about the meaning or theme of the passage as a whole based on and supported by some of the evidence you discovered. Write it as a complete sentence at the bottom of the page.
List all the possible meanings of a pun or word with double-meanings.
In the phrase, “my love is like a rose,” “my love” could refer to the speaker’s feeling or to the beloved. [this double-syntax]
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