Teaching Effective Word Choice
By: Danielle Warner
Tags: Vocabulary, Teaching English, Reflections, Effective Communication

Effective Word Choice

Effective word choice lies in the realm of rhetoric, particularly in the potential activity of the text, which William Covino and David Jolliffe have defined as being present when “the rhetor intends it to do something, to affect or change the auditors’ minds or actions or environments” (329). They also recognize that since all texts have the potential to affect the reader, a text may also have unintended potential activity (329).

This makes effective word choice difficult because different people will have made different connections with certain words depending on their upbringing and exposure to different language. As a result different words will have more or less potential activity for certain people.

For example, I have always encountered the word ‘soar’ in contexts that have caused me to relate the word with a sense of freedom and power. Thus, if I were to see the sentence, “the bird soared across the sky,” I would immediately assume the bird is important and powerful (perhaps an eagle) and that the theme of freedom may play a role in the following text. On the other hand, “The bird flew across the sky” sounds more like a background description than a main action.

The Role of Emotion

Inclusion of terms can also be used to elicit an emotional reaction, such as exhibited in the following excerpt from a rhetorical analysis of an IKEA advertisement; “The language of “rubber duck,” “warmth of wood” and “natural materials” reminds the audience of a care-free period from their childhood when they would run around in the parks and play in the bathtub without any worries” (Xu et al.). Even in junior high, students should be able to identify the connections they make to certain words and understand how those connections influence them. They can thus also be shown how to make use of those connections to influence the emotions of their audience. These reactions, however, are contingent on the childhood experiences of the readers. As such, writers need to be familiar with the experiences of our audience in order to understand what additional meanings words will have. This means that students need to develop an understanding of rhetoric and discourse-specific language in order to develop effective word choice.

The Audience

Anne Beaufort has designed a conceptual model of knowledge domains to address areas of knowledge expert writers draw on to create effective texts. It discusses knowledge domains that should be addressed when writing and identifies the information we should look at when evaluating our audience. Particularly relevant when addressing word choice are the areas of “Subject Matter Knowledge”, “Genre Knowledge”, and “Rhetorical Knowledge” (19).

Subject matter knowledge involves awareness of specialized terms and of existing ideas about the topic (Chilewska et al. 1). Students can gain an understanding of this through exposure to relevant literature and access to scaffolding in the case of more advanced texts.

Genre knowledge involves understanding the type of writing required in a certain situation (Chilewska et al. 1). This is a concept that can initially be explicitly taught in the classroom as a series of rules and then developed implicitly through exposure to example texts.

Rhetorical knowledge involves adjusting writing to the expectations and needs of the audience (Chilewska et al. 1). This can be taught through discussing how language is used to address different demographics and practice activities that call for critical analysis of language-audience relations in provided texts.

Through in-class explanation and application of these three concepts, students’ understandings of writing to appeal to audience expectations can be developed. From there, these concepts can be applied to word choice.

When you have an awareness of the associations your audience has with particular words, as well as the expectations they hold for the language of a text, you can use this knowledge to draw their attention to certain information.

As I addressed earlier, this can be done by appealing emotionally to those associations and expectations. However, it can also be used to give emphasis to specific parts of a text. In reference to grammar, Elizabeth Sargent and Cornelia Paraskevas showed that “one way we, as writers, can catch the reader’s attention is to make an unexpected move” (263). When a passage consists of generic, high frequency words (walked, talked, etc.), a reader is able to move through at a quick pace. However, when a segment contains lower frequency words, or language that is unexpected within the discourse, it can slow down the reader and distract them. This occurs often in novice academic writing to the detriment of the text (Hanne Bjornstad), however can be a powerful tool for the experienced writer.