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A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation. A connotation is frequently described as either positive or negative, with regard to its pleasing or displeasing emotional connection. [ 1 ]
Antanagoge places a negative point next to and/or between a positive point, attempting to redirect attention away from the negative point. It may also refer to placing a positive outlook on a situation that has a negative connotation, such as in the following examples: [2] Literary examples "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
Anthony Weston, for example, admonishes students and writers: "In general, avoid language whose only function is to sway the emotions". [1] [2] One aspect of loaded language is that loaded words and phrases occur in pairs, sometimes as political framing techniques by individuals with opposing agendas. Heller calls these "a Boo! version and a ...
While firm, obstinate, and pig-headed are all synonymous with stubbornness, the emotive connotations of these words are different. Firm carries a positive connotation, obstinate carries a neutral (or slightly negative) connotation, and pig-headed fool carries a negative connotation. Thus, most individuals have a positive reaction toward the ...
Clear counter-examples include words with positive connotations that regularly co-occur with negative words, for example ease, soothe, tackle. [5] In such cases, the words that follow such verbs are probably perceived as negative, but not the verbs themselves. Another debate concerns whether the term semantic/discourse prosody only relates to ...
The eucatastrophe is a classical catastrophe with an unexpected positive outcome for the protagonist. This term was coined to distance itself from the vernacular use of the word 'catastrophe' to signify disaster (which gave the term negative connotations in everyday usage).
By the nineteenth century, the word had developed a negative connotation, as evidenced by Charles Dickens in Dombey and Son, where a character is described in contrasting terms as "a little condescending, but extremely kind". [1] "In eighteenth-century prose, it is therefore common to find the word condescension qualified by adjectives such as ...
In English, the cognate began taking a pejorative or negative connotation in the mid-19th century, when it was used in the political sphere. [ 3 ] Non-English cognates of propaganda as well as some similar non-English terms retain neutral or positive connotations.