Specificity: Another Quality of Effective Diction

Specificity

Contrary to theoretic argument, general and specific ARE opposite terms. Words are general when they refer not to individual things but to groups or classes: tree, father, book.

By contrast, words are specific when they refer to individual persons, objects, or events: The Magnolia tree, Emily’s father, I read “My Antonia”.  

Technically, a general term may be made more specific with a modifier that restricts the reference to a particular member of the group or class.

Most general	Less general	Still less general	Specific
Vegetation	grass	elm tree	The grass in my yard is tall.
Dress	short	mini dress	Jan’s mini dress was cute.
Container	plastic bottle	milk jug	don’t buy milk in plastic jugs.
Flowers	roses	yellow roses	She planted roses in the patio area.

With this brief exercise, see if you can arrange the words below with the most general term at the left and the most specific at the right, as in this example:

         matter, food, fruit, citrus fruit, orange

1. Labrador retriever, quadruped, bird dog, animal, dog
2. protons, molecule, electrons, atom, nucleus
3. bush, rosebush, plant, decorative bush, Tropicana rosebush
4. Jupiter, Milky Way, sun, solar system, galaxy
5. Scientist, chemist, Marie Curie, Nobel Prize winner

The context of your writing determines whether a specific or a general word is required. Some purposes require generalities.

On the other hand, the term concrete is used to describe some kinds of specific diction. Concrete is the opposite of abstract.

Concrete words refer to particular things or qualities that can be perceived by your senses: details of appearance, sounds, smells, textures, tastes.

Abstract words refer to qualities shared by many people or things: newness, width, size, shape, value, joy, anger.

Abstract qualities cannot be perceived directly by observation; they are concepts that you infer from what you see.

Look for the post entitled "Imagery", the third of the three qualities of effective diction.