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Connotations can be positive, neutral, or negative and they are subjective, unique to the individual, even though most people would probably respond positively to fireplace and negatively to arson. English language learners in particular may struggle to grasp connotations. Consider the similar denotations but differing connotations of the words relaxed, inactive, and lazy. I’d prefer to be viewed as relaxed rather than lazy, wouldn’t you?
Now to the poll results. Of 266 voters, 200 (75%) felt that snobbish was more insulting than smug. These two negatively charged words share similar but not identical denotations. I was curious to learn if the affective associations triggered by the words varied widely. The finding was surprising—in my perceptual lens, smug is more insulting, more negative. The word reeks of superiority. I was in the minority. One can only guess at the personal experiences that triggered the varied responses but a few comments provide clues:
An email stated, “I down-rated smug because the mind is set and arrogant whereas snobbish is because of birth, but context makes a difference.”
A college student wrote, “I would have to say I would much rather be called smug than snobbish. I just don't like the word snob, I guess.”
Another blogger said, “I think snobbish is more universally insulting because many people aren’t sure what smug means, but nobody likes a snob.”
Do fewer people know what smug means? To investigate, I consulted The Educator’s Word Frequency Guide, a corpus created by Zeno, Ivens, Millard, and Duvvuri (1995). In the listing, the frequency of smug was greater than that of snobbish, but neither word appears frequently in English texts (0.5436 versus 0.1431 appearances per million words). Even when all forms of smug (that is, smug, smugly, smugness) were tallied against snob, snobs, snobbish, snobbishly and snobbishness, the smug family had a higher total frequency (1.0429 versus 0.6497). Thus, based on the written word, smug should be known at least as well as snobbish, but we must also consider the frequency of spoken words, and there is no data base for that to my knowledge. It is possible that we hear snob more frequently than smug.
At any rate, the implications are clear—words can trigger surprising and differing emotional responses. Students need to be aware of this. Perceptions are key to language processing. Communication (including reading comprehension) depends not only on understanding a word’s denotation but also its connotation.
Classroom application: After the denotations of a handful of near-synonyms are learned, why not vote on their connotations with sealed ballots? Discuss the rationale behind the vote. Such discussion should prompt thinking, learning and memory. This task should be accessible to everyone as long as the denotations are known.
These types of engaging tasks will motivate most students and may kindle interest in words and phrases, especially needful for children of poverty. Word consciousness should develop along with explicit knowledge of a word's denotations and connotations. Furthermore, writing might well improve as students become discerning with respect to word selection (see poetry post). I have not found rigorous evidence to support these claims but the theory is sound and a few promising studies offer support for the idea, including the study described in the prior post, carried out by Baumann, Ware, and Edwards, 2007 (and see Graves, 2006; Scott, Skobel, & Wells, 2008).
References:
- Graves, M.F. (2006). The vocabulary book: Learning and instruction. New York: Teachers College Press.
- Scott, J., Skobel, B., & Wells, J. (2008). The word-conscious classroom: Building the vocabulary readers and writers need. New York: Scholastic - Theory into Practice Series.
- Zeno, S. M., Ivens, S. H., Millard, R. T., & Duvvuri, R. (1995). The educator’s word frequency guide. New York: Touchstone Applied Science Associates, Inc.