Tone & Mood

Tone

When we read we hear the speaker’s voice. It’s the voice that conveys the tone of an author work.

Tone is the author’s implied attitude towards its subject.

Tone is an abstraction we make from the details of a text’s language: the use of meter and rhyme, the inclusion or exclusion of certain details; particular choices of words or sentence pattern, of imagery or figurative language.

My love is like a red rose

STOP!

whispered

Elements of Poetry: ToneAn author’s tone is describe by adjectives. For example you might say “The author of this novel sounds…”

cynical, depressed, cheerful, sympathetic, outraged, positive, angry, sarcastic, ironic,

solemn, vindictive, intense or excited.

Tone is not an action, it’s an attitude.

Some examples of authors’ tone…

This author’s serious tone

inspires an atmosphere of tragedy.

This leads to a mood of sadness,

sympathy, and caring in the

reader when reading this passage.

Poet’s often “bare their souls” in their

poems. This poet’s grieving tone

reveals her deepest feelings about her

father and his death, creating an

atmosphere of sadness and longing.

This inspires a mood of sympathy and

caring in the readers.

This author’s sarcastic tone

inspires a slightly humorous

atmosphere in spite of tragedy.

This puts the reader in a cynical

mood.

DictionAll good writers are keenly aware of diction,

their choice of words

In reading a text it is necessary to know what the words mean, but it is equally important to understand what the words imply or suggest.

Denotation is the literal, dictionary meaning of a word.

Connotation is the associations and implications that go beyond a word’s literal meaning.

Diction

For example, with the word BIRD

Denotation: A feathered animal with wings

Connotation: Fragility, vulnerability, sky, freedom.

What about if we used the name of a specific bird? It’s denotation would remain essentially the same but how would its connotation change?

Hawk Dove

DictionOther forms of diction include:

Informal diction (personal writing)

Ex. I am going to tell Kathy I’m sorry that I forgot to ask her to come to my birthday party.

VS.

Formal diction (academic or literary writing)

Ex. I will inform Kathy that I apologize for forgetting to request her presence at my birthday party.

How does the change in the form of diction change the tone and mood of each sentence?

DictionColloquial words – conversational language

such as: Hey, hiya, watcha, gonna, ya, ya’ll, wanna, doin’

Slang – words or phrases that are not considered standard in a speaker’s language but are acceptable in certain social settings.

DictionJargon – the special language of a profession

or group.

Cacophonous words – harsh sounding words

Ex. maggot, detest, disgusted, moan, slime

Euphonious words - pleasant sounding words

Ex. butterfly, puppy, luxurious, shimmer, trickle

ImageryWriters take in the world and give us impressions of what they experience through images.

Imagery is language that addresses the senses (sight, smell, taste, touch and sound).

Imagery is not only used to create a mental picture for the reader but to also help convey tone, mood and theme.

ImageryConsider the first stanza of Li Ho’s poem “A Beautiful Girl Combs Her Hair”

Awake at dawn she’s dreamingby cool silk curtains

What images do these lines convey? How does this affect the tone and mood of the poem?

Figures of SpeechA simile makes an explicit comparison between

two things using the words like or as.

For example, “A sip of Mrs. Cook’s coffee is like a punch in the stomach.” This simile suggests that Mrs. Cook’s coffee is very potent.

“Mrs. Cook’s coffee is as strong as the cafeteria’s coffee” is not a simile because the comparison is literal. Mrs. Cook’s coffee is compared to something like it, another kind of coffee.

Figures of SpeechA metaphor, like a simile, makes a

comparison between two unlike things, but it does so implicitly, without the words like or as.

“Mrs. Cook’s coffee is a punch in the stomach.”

Or, as Macbeth tells us, “Life is a brief candle.”

Practice: Is it a simile or metaphor?

She is as cute as a kitten.

I am as busy as a bee.

Sea of grief

It broke my heart when my dog died.

Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.

Other Figures of SpeechPun – A play on words that relies on a word having

more than one meaning or sounding like another word.

Ex. Vacuuming sucks; Corduroy pillows are making headlines.

Synecdoche – A figure of speech in which part of something is used to represent the whole.

Ex. A person in prison is “behind bars”; Germany invaded Poland.

Metonymy – When something closely associated a subject is substituted for it.

Ex. Lend me your ears; That was a delicious dish.

Other Figures of SpeechPersonification – The attribution of human

characteristics to nonhuman things.Ex. The trees screamed in the raging wind; The mice conspired in the cupboard.

Other Figures of SpeechParadox – A statement that initially appears

to be self-contradictory but that, on closer inspection, turns out to make sense.

Ex. “The pen is mightier than the sword”

Oxymoron – A condensed form of a paradox in which two contradictory words are used together.

Ex. Cold fire; jumbo shrimp

Other Figures of SpeechUnderstatement - deliberately expressing

an idea as less important than it actually is either for ironic emphasis or for politeness and tact

Ex. "The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.“

Hyperbole – A figure of speech, exaggeration in order to add emphasis without intending to be literally true.

Ex. Teenagers eat everything in the house.

Practice: Is it a pun, synecdoche, metonymy, personification, apostrophe, paradox, oxymoron, understatement or hyperbole?

The temperature rose to 55 degrees today. It was a little warm.

Lend me a hand.

You’re clearly confused.

I just bought a new set of wheels.

The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky.

Any questions?