decided that people with different political beliefs might think differently.
What characterises the words that are not loaded? Grammatical words such as articles and auxiliary verbs are less likely to carry connotations, as their meaning is grammatical rather than lexical. Therefore ‘was’, ‘a’, ‘the’ carry no connotations.
Words that are highly specialised and are restricted to a particular area of meaning are less likely to be loaded. ‘Morphophonemics’ and ‘photosynthesis’ are probably too restricted and specialised in their use to carry any emotional loading. The majority of English speakers will not have ‘morphophonemics’ in their vocabulary, and though ‘photosynthesis’ is more widely known, it still has a restricted range.
Words that are highly general are also less likely to be loaded. There are a lot of words that have a classification function, in that they are general terms that encompass more specific terms.
‘Vehicle’ is a general term that encompasses car, bus, bicycle, lorry, truck, van, etc. ‘Car’ encompasses sports car, saloon, hatchback, and a whole range of specific names such as BMW, Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, that have a wide range of cultural connotations.
Words that have this classification function are called hypernyms. Examples of hypernyms are:
fruit, animal, bird, flower
The words with a more specific meaning that can be classified by the hypernyms are called hyponyms. Examples of hyponyms are:
apple, orange, banana dog, cat, buffalo, warthog robin, vulture, eagle
Hyponyms are more likely to carry strong connotations than hypernyms, though this is not an invariable rule. The word ‘animal’ can carry negative connotations in metaphors such as ‘He behaved like an animal.’ However, more specific connotations can be carried by the use of more specific words. ‘He ate like a pig.’ ‘You rat!’ ‘She’s a bitch.’
The section on synonyms above looked at the way the English language often has a range of words that focus around the same area of meaning. There are historical reasons for this that the next section will discuss, but often this wealth of synonyms allows speakers or writers to express an opinion by choosing a synonym that is loaded in a negative or positive way.
Activity
Look at Text: Amnesty. Identify words used for feelings and emotions, words used to name individuals, and words used to name groups of people. How does the word choice work to make the text effective?
Rewrite the text, substituting proper names for the nouns relating to groups of people (e.g. for ‘soldiers’ substitute a person’s name). Has this changed the impact of the text?
How?
What is the effect of the use of personal pronouns ‘we’ and ‘you’?
Text: Amnesty
Commentary
Most of the words used for feelings and emotions are abstract nouns with connotations of great suffering. The suffering is closely linked to the people whose proper names are given. The text does not, therefore, talk about pain and agony in an abstract way, but about the pain and agony of named individuals. The perpetrators, however, are anonymous groups: soldiers, troops and police.
These are comments made by students who carried out this task: The anonymous groups are more sinister, more frightening.
The groups make it sound official, as though the people in charge wanted it to happen. Names could just be criminal killers, and that’s different.
The groups are all employed by governments. They are supposed to protect people, not torture them. That makes it worse.
The use of ‘we’ and ‘you’ helps to establish a sense of exclusion in the reader. The function of the text is to persuade people to join Amnesty International, and the initial
The reason you join Amnesty is not words, but pain.
It’s the pain of children like 16 year old Sevki Akinci, literally barbecued alive by Turkish soldiers who came to his village looking for guns which they didn’t find.
It’s the tears of 17 year old Ravi Sundaralingam, tortu red by Indian troops in Sri Lanka—tied upside down with a fire lit beneath his head and electrodes sparking at his genitals.
It’s the anguish of Angelica Mandoza de Ascarza, whose teenaged son was taken from home by the security forces in Peru, nerver to be heard from again. He joined the hundreds who have simply ‘disappeared.’
It’s the terror of a 23 year old Tibetan nun, raped by Chinese soldiers with an electric cattle prod.
It’s the agony of children in Guatemala City, whose eyes were burned out by police cigars, their tongues ripped from their heads with pliers.
Maybe you simply don’t realise that such vile things go on.
But for two years now, we have been running appeals in this newspaper. With one exception, all of these cases were mentioned in previous appeals
exclusion, in this context, makes the reader feel guilty and in some way responsible. If you, as a reader, feel this, then it is likely that you will want to become included, one of the ‘we’ not one of the ‘you’.
Note: see satellite text: The Language of Newspapers
Activity
Look at the Amnesty text again, and the word ‘barbecued’ in line 3. Make a list of the connotations of this word (as it stands alone, not as it is used in the text).
(For commentary on this activity, see p. 122.)
Summary: words and meanings
The term ‘word’ is, therefore, not as easy to define as it first seems. Any analysis of text that is looking at word level needs to be done with an awareness of the complicated relationship that exists between words and meanings, the patterns words create with other words, how frequently the words occur, whether they are primarily spoken or written, and whether they can be interpreted literally or not.