Are Denotation and Connotation Part of Your Poetry Unit? They Should Be.

When you hear “literary terms,” what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? 

We’re guessing it’s probably some kind of figurative language: simile, metaphor, symbol . . . maybe imagery or characterization if you branch out a little.

Two terms that probably don’t jump immediately to mind? Denotation and connotation.

They didn’t for us. When we reviewed literary terms with our sophomores, denotation and connotation felt like awkward inclusions that we just kind of glossed over, little bits of trivia that students “should” know but didn’t really matter that much.

And yet in our AP Lit textbook, the third chapter in the poetry section, before imagery, figurative language, even structure and form, was titled, “Denotation and Connotation.”

While this full-chapter focus on such “minor” terms surprised us at first, we’ve come to be big believers in the importance of teaching denotation and connotation as key devices in your poetry unit, especially in AP Literature. 

We probably shouldn’t have been that surprised. Denotation and connotation are a stable part of the Common Core standards, especially at the secondary level. Here’s the 12th grade version of CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.4:

“Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful.”

Denotation and connotation are also part of the Essential Knowledge in the Course and Exam Description for AP Literature: “Words with multiple meanings or connotations add nuance or complexity that can contribute to interpretations of a text” (FIG-1.L).

In retrospect, our surprise at the emphasis on these terms isn’t because we didn’t think they were important. Of course individual words matter when you’re close reading a text. It’s more that, for those of us who are expert readers, paying attention to word choice is something we do naturally, something we don’t think to put a name to.

But we were forgetting that our students aren’t expert readers, and they need to be reminded that, especially when it comes to poetry, paying close attention to individual words is necessary. The more we emphasized denotation and connotation, the better our students got at comprehending, analyzing, and discussing poetry.

So, how do we make denotation and connotation a more intentional part of our poetry unit? Here are some ideas to get you started.

What Are Denotation and Connotation?

If denotation and connotation aren’t go-to literary terms for you, here are the definitions and examples we’ve included in our literary terms list:

• Denotation: the dictionary definition of a word; its literal meaning.
  • The denotation of the word “conflate” is “to combine or blend (two things, especially two versions of a text) so as to form a whole.”
• Connotation: the feelings and ideas associated with a word based on its use over time; this can be either personal or societal.
  • Both “house” and “home” refer to the place where a person lives, but “home” connotes a sense of safety, belonging, and comfort while “house” is simply associated with the structure a person lives in. (There’s a reason we don’t go around saying, “House Sweet House” or “There’s no place like house,” after all.)

Discussing denotation and connotation also provides a helpful entry point into discussing another important but often misused literary term:

• Diction: a writer’s choice of words; when discussing diction, it is usually described with an adjective.
  • When Wilfred Owen, in “Dulce et Decorum Est,” writes, “If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs / Bitter as the cud / Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,” he uses sickening diction to convey the horrors of gas attacks in World War I.

On some level, these terms seem overly simple. Obviously, the definition of a word matters, but does it really count as a literary device?

Absolutely.

Why Are Denotation and Connotation So Important?

Here are a few reasons it’s important to teach denotation and connotation as part of your poetry unit, especially in AP Literature:

If you’re reading Dickens, you can get away with skipping a word or three (or twenty). We know he was paid by the word, and genius as he may be, there are definitely chapters where you can tell Charlie’s got bills to pay.

But, as English poet Robert Southey once wrote, “It is with words as with sunbeams—the more / they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”

Poetry is the most condensed form of language, which means every single word has been chosen with care. There’s no fluff or padding to be found: every word matters.

When every word matters, you have to make the most of every word you select. A word that can mean two (or more) things at once is better than a word that only means one thing. A word that carries a host of other associations is more valuable than a word that requires explanation.

When we anticipate this, actively looking for multiple denotations and connotations, we unlock additional clues to a poem’s meaning.

Maybe it’s just us, but we’ve found diction to be a problematic term for AP Literature students. 

Students love to use diction as a “catch-all” literary device for anything they want to write about that they don’t know how to identify. And yet it means “the writer’s choice of words.” So when students attempt to argue that the writer uses diction to convey a theme, they’re making the most obvious of statements: Yes, student. The author did use words to convey the theme.

Diction is discussed most effectively when there’s a noticeable pattern, which is why we insist that diction must be described with an adjective. Paying attention to the connotations of words, particularly the context in which they’re most often used, helps students to be more alert for these patterns and better able to discuss diction in a way that helps, rather than hinders, their arguments.

One of the most stressful AP Literature experiences for many students is encountering a new piece of text for the first two free-response questions and having to articulate how the author conveys meaning. To earn the maximum score, students must identify at least two literary devices, and students often stare at the page with a sense of rising panic. When they can’t find a simile or personification, they resort to discussing the poem’s use of alliteration (in two words that are fifteen lines apart) or declare the text to be an allegory (it never is).

But denotation and connotation are almost always relevant, and because they require students to focus on individual words, students who have learned to discuss the terms appropriately can write strong commentary that connects the small details of their quotation to their claims about a poem’s meaning.

That qualifier, “who have learned to discuss the terms appropriately,” however, is an important one. How do we help our students get to this point?

4 Strategies for Teaching Denotation and Connotation

Introduce the concepts with isolated exercises.

When we’re teaching something our students are unlikely to have encountered before, we like to start with simple or non-text examples whenever possible. This is most often something we do with our standard-level students (for example, we start our review of plot-related terms with Pixar shorts and a fun TV episode).

For denotation and connotation, new (or at least less familiar) to many of our AP Literature students, our textbook included several “practice exercises” at the end of the introductory chapter. Students looked at words with multiple denotations (like “fast”) in different contexts, determining which denotation was most appropriate in each context. They also ranked sets of four words from most negative to most positive, allowing them to explore connotations.

It was helpful for our students to actually experience the ways individual word choice can affect meaning, particularly for words that they assumed they knew.

One example in our textbook was the word “doubloon.” According to our favorite dictionary, its denotation is “a former gold coin of Spain and Spanish America, originally equal to two escudos but fluctuating in value.” And yet, when we hear “doubloon,” most of us immediately think “pirates.” It’s a great example of a word that has picked up such strong associations that we assume we know what it means when we actually don’t.

If you’re using a textbook that doesn’t include practice exercises, a quick search on TPT pulls up lots of great word sort activities (at a variety of levels) to help students practice with the concept.

Require students to look up definitions.

Speaking of dictionaries, it’s essential that students are forced to grapple with the meaning of individual words instead of assuming they “kind of” know what a word means or insisting that they “get the gist.”

For many years, we had students grab dictionaries (that sounds so quaint now) along with their textbooks for in-class discussions; we eventually transitioned to including dictionary work as part of the study guides students completed to prepare for discussion.

We recommend pre-identifying words that students need to look up; while we found value in looking up nearly every word in a poem, our students did not share our enthusiasm.

We also recommend providing some level of accountability for this task, whether it’s having students share the appropriate definitions in class or including the correct definition as part of a quiz: most students will go with the first definition listed no matter how many times you tell them not to.

Encourage students to start with “positive” or “negative.”

It can be challenging for students to come up with the right adjective to describe connotation or diction (and, boy, have we seen some weird selections over the years).

If this is the case for your students, it may be helpful for them to initially start with just identifying the connotation of a word (or a pattern of diction in a text) as negative or positive. Not only does this generally lead to more fruitful discussions in which you can guide them toward a more precise adjective, but that simple choice gets students away from summary and into interpretation, even at a most basic level.

Model how to discuss denotation, connotation, and diction in a literary analysis essay.

Students tend to be great generalists: it’s a tough transition to get them to write commentary that unpacks the individual words in a quotation. It may be helpful as part of this unit to model for them how to effectively discuss denotation, connotation, and diction in writing; this could be followed by assigning students to write a 5C paragraph about how an author’s word choice contributes to meaning in the text.

5 Poems That Work Well for a Focus on Denotation and Connotation

Our go-to poems for introducing denotation and connotation are both sonnets, in part because we usually pair discussion of denotation and connotation with our introduction to structure and form.

But these two poems both provide ample opportunities to explore the effect of multiple denotations and connotations, and they’re generally appealing to students.

Sonnet 138, William Shakespeare

Frame this as a depiction of a toxic relationship, and you’ll get some passionate responses from students who recognize themselves, their classmates, or their favorite TV characters in this (obviously Shakespearean) sonnet about two lovers who stay together despite the fact that they’re both lying to each other (and both aware of it).

It’s perfect for discussing denotation and connotation: here’s a sampling of words that rely on multiple meanings: “lies,” “vainly,” “simply,” “credit,” “habit,” “told.” That’s a lot for a 14-line poem, and there are quite a few other words that rely on a denotation other than the most obvious one.

“The world is too much with us,” William Wordsworth

Wordsworth follows the Italian sonnet form in his reflection on the poor trade humans have made, exchanging industrialization and economic progress for the beauties of untouched nature, a topic that feels quite timely.

The power of Wordsworth’s sonnet when it comes to discussing denotation and connotation is in its contrasts: between negative and positive, yes, but also between the sacred and the secular.

While the two sonnets were our most consistent texts for focusing specifically on denotation and connotation, here are a couple others that work well:

“One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop

Bishop’s poem about loss requires students to reflect on the many different forms of loss we experience throughout our lives. It also makes for fruitful discussions of tone, structure, point of view, and hyperbole.

“A Hymn to God the Father,” John Donne

As we’ve shared before, we’re huge John Donne fans, and his poetic prayer of confession relies on puns (“done,” “Sun,” and “more”); the pattern of religious terms is also key to interpreting the poem.

“Five O’Clock Shadow,” Sir John Betjeman

Betjeman’s reflection on the loneliness and despair of hospital patients not only plays with the common phrase “five o’clock shadow,” but presents a pattern of diction that contrasts the patients with those who visit or care for them and keenly portrays the sense of pain—physical and emotional—that they feel.

As simple (and, perhaps, unexciting) as it sounds, helping your students focus on the importance of single words is one of the most helpful things you can do in your poetry unit, which means taking the time to explicitly teach denotation and connotation. This is probably most important in Honors, PreAP, and AP English courses, but even our standard-level students benefit from this kind of zoomed-in attention, even if it’s a quicker lesson at this level (or part of a longer assignment that covers multiple literary terms).

If you’re looking to incorporate some of the resources we’ve mentioned today into your poetry unit, you might find these three particularly helpful: our literary terms list, our 5C paragraph structure mini-lesson (which comes with a character analysis prompt that could easily be modified to help students practice discussing word choice), and our mini-unit on how to write a literary analysis essay (which provides some examples of how to discuss diction and the related “selection of detail” appropriately).