Appropriateness: One of the Three Qualities of Effective Diction

Appropriateness

Words are appropriate when they are suited to your subject, targeted audience, and purpose.

Targeting certain audiences with “unfavorable” analysis can sometimes be disconcerting because readers (other than your intended audience) will respond “unfavorably”. 

On the other hand, your intended readership responds favorably. It’s the “two-sided” coin predicament. 

“Response” (in the context of favorable or unfavorable) means you clearly conveyed your message, keeping in mind that there are over eight billion people on our planet.  

Disagreement or a different point of view (depending on the subject) is to be expected.

Example of writing and delivering to a specific “audience”:

Imagine a pediatrician giving a lecture at a University on the “growth of a fetus” to second-year med students and then to second-graders at a health fair.  The subject is the same, but the audience and purpose are so different that the doctor alters the content, manner, and language before talking to elementary students.

When we choose to accommodate audience and purpose, it affects no only diction, but tone and style.  

Diction, tone, and style are similar, in terms of requiring the writer to make important decisions and adjustments regarding the degree of formality appropriate for a given perspective.

For instance, shorts and a halter top are not appropriate for a formal banquet; three-piece suits and bridal dresses are not appropriate for the classroom; likewise, some words inappropriate in some situations are perfectly acceptable in others.

The best way to understand this distinction is to consider four types of words: learned, popular, colloquial, and slang.

                                I.      Learned and Popular words - Most words in English, as in other languages, are common to the speech of educated and uneducated speakers alike. These words are the basic elements of everyday communication. They are called popular words because they belong to the whole populace.

By contrast, there are words we read more often that we hear, write more often than we speak—words used more widely by educated than by uneducated people, and more likely to be used on formal than on informal occasions. These are called learned words.

                  

Popular words	Learned words
agree	concur
begin	commence
clear	lucid
disagree	remonstrate
end	terminate

                                II.   Colloquialisms – The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term colloquial as “characteristic of or appropriate to the spoken language or writing that seeks its effect; informal in diction or style of expression.”

Colloquialisms are not “incorrect” or “bad” English.  They are the kinds of words people, educated and uneducated alike, use when they are speaking together informally.

The deliberate use of colloquialisms in writing conveys the impression of direct and intimate conversation. To achieve this affect you might use contractions (don’t, wasn’t, hasn’t) or clipped words (taxi, phone).  Other typical colloquialisms are:

           ·        awfully (used for very)

·        back of (used for behind)

·        fix (used for predicament)

·        peeve (used for annoy)

           ·        over with (used for completed)  

                                III.  Slang – this term is listed as “language of a highly colloquial type” in the Oxford English Dictionary.  Everyone uses slang in some form.  However, the appropriateness of slang depends on the occasion.

A politician would probably avoid using slang in a public speech but might use it in an informal setting.

Much slang is borrowed from the popular vocabulary and given new meanings: bread, soul, cool, split, flipped, rap, high.

Look for the post entitled "Specificity", another of the three qualities of effective diction.