The denotative meaning of a word is its dictionary definition or generally agreed-upon objective usage. For example, the denotative definition of alcohol is “a colorless, volatile, flammable liquid, obtained by the fermentation of sugars or starches, which is widely used as a solvent, drug base, explosive, or intoxicating beverage.”
Connotative meaning invests a subject with emotional coloration. Thus, the “intoxicating beverage” is no longer just a chemical substance but either “the poison scourge” or “the oil of conversation.” Connotative language intensifies feelings, whereas denotative language encourages detachment.
Many of the techniques of language that help listeners see subjects can also arouse feelings. Simile and metaphor may kindle emotion by the relationships and associations they suggest. Representation can arouse by the focus it gives to a subject. For example, Leslie Eason impressed her Vanderbilt class members with her ability to frame metaphors that stirred deep feeling as well as reflection. She began her speech on the disease of racism by reciting lines of a poem she had written: “What if I go to Heaven, and then to me they tell, White Angels enter here, Black Angels go to hell.” In another speech, she used a traditional metaphor to describe the plight of ambitious women: “Glass ceilings still exist.” Women, she said, can rise just so far in the workplace before they bump into invisible barriers. But soon she gave the metaphor a novel twist. Other women, she said, never even get a chance to rise. They are stuck in low-pay, low-ability jobs, the victims of “sticky floors.”
Such techniques are well suited to stimulate emotions. They produce what Longinus called the image, the natural language of the passions. Writing some two thousand years ago, this Roman rhetorician noted that images intensify feelings when “you think you see what you describe, and you place it before the eyes of your hearers.”3 During World War II, when London was bombed every night, the British people needed reassurance that they would prevail. Sir Winston Churchill built images of hope in his radio speeches. One example is the following, developed around a metaphor of fire:
What he [Hitler] has clone is to kindle a fire in British hearts . . . which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe.’
Another useful technique to arouse feeling is onomatopoeia, the tendency of the sounds of certain words, such as buzz and hiss, to imitate the objects of their meaning. Suppose you were trying to describe the scene of refugees fleeing from war and starvation. How could you bring that scene into focus for listeners who are far away? One way would be to describe an old man and his granddaughter as they trudge down a road to nowhere. The word “trudge” is an example of onomatopoeia. Its very sound suggests the weary, discouraged walk of the survivors. Onomatopoeia can bring us into a scene by allowing us to hear its noises, smell its odors, taste its flavors, or touch its surfaces. As it overcomes distance, it also arouses feeling.
Hyperbole, or purposeful exaggeration, can also arouse feeling. Speakers
often use hyperbole to encourage action or force listeners to confront problems. Note the use of hyperbole in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final speech:
Men for years now have been talking about war and peace, but now no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence in this world, it’s nonviolence or nonexistence… . And in the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done and done in a hurry to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed.