- [David] Hello readers,
I suppose it's time,
if we have to to talk about tone.
You see, if I were feeling snide
or dismissive or sarcastic,
I'd use a lot of disdainful language
to talk about how little
I valued this topic,
which is a piddling trifle, a Bagatelle,
a trivial, little nothing.
Far more likely though,
considering my love of languages,
the notion that I'd be
enthusiastic and encouraging,
I would say understanding tone
unlocks a treasure house of understanding,
it is a feast of knowledge.
Tone communicates how an author feels
about the topic they're writing about,
this can come across in a
number of different ways,
it can reflect their
enthusiasm or skepticism,
it can also communicate
formality or informality,
an academic paper or a
speech before the UN,
for example are very different things
from a toast at a wedding
or a thank you card for a birthday gift
and this kind of difference
in tone is something
that sociologists and
linguists call register.
Social conventions and customs
call for different registers
in different circumstances,
just as it would be
inappropriate in most situations
to wear a tuxedo at the beach,
so too would it be incongruous
to use extremely formal
language in an informal setting?
(melodic orchestral music)
(clearing throat) Dear honored sir,
it was the privilege of my very life
to have you attend my 14th birthday party.
I am grateful beyond words
for your most generous gift,
a check for $36 American.
Your humble and obedient servant, David.
In fact using extremely formal language
and high-minded gratitude
for something as relatively
small as a birthday gift
might even come across as
sarcastic or insulting.
But this is sort of an extreme example,
let's pull back and discuss
how an understanding of tone
can aid you in making sense
of informational texts.
One great way to do that
is to analyze word choice,
we can look at a writer's language
and determine their
attitude towards the subject
based on the words they've
chosen to describe it.
Oceans of ink have been spilled
over comparisons between
a Chicago style hotdog
and a New York style hotdog.
The first with its
garden's worth of toppings,
but a holier than now
prohibition of ketchup,
the latter with its sauerkraut, mustard
and dubious dirty water cooking style.
But scant attention, a droplet
of ink before the ocean
has been paid to the half-smoke,
the unsung but mighty regional
sausage of Washington DC.
Now how does the author
think about the subject?
Well, we know that they think
that not enough writing has been done
about DC's regional
sausage, the half-smoke,
but how do they feel about it?
How do the words they use
express their feelings?
Let's break it down bit by bit.
So right out of the gate,
we have oceans of ink,
this is a deliberate
piece of overstatement,
there are no literal oceans made of ink,
but it's being set up in
opposition to the droplet of ink
used to describe half-smokes
later in the paragraph.
Half-smokes are described
as unsung, but mighty,
which suggests that they
haven't been given their due,
there hasn't been enough
praise for half-smokes
and that therefore the amount of attention
given to Chicago and New York hotdogs
is unfair or even disproportionate.
I think we can also
determine from word choice,
that the author thinks a Chicago hot dog
is a little ridiculous
and that a New York hot
dog is a little gross.
How do we know this?
Chicagoans generally don't
like ketchup on their hotdogs
and the way the author
phrases this is by saying,
that they have a holier than
thou prohibition on ketchup,
which is to say they get all
haughty and upset about it,
which is weird because it's ketchup,
listen, I'm a Chicagoan by birth,
I used to feel this way
and I'm not even sure why.
Similarly the word
dubious in the description
of the New York hotdog, meaning doubtful
suggests that the dirty
water cooking method
is kind of nasty sounding,
why would the author do this?
Is it to say these are terrible hot dogs
and nobody should eat them?
No, I don't think so,
The author is trying to
make room for the half-smoke
in the national sausage
conversation and to do that,
they're first trying to
dismantle the importance
of New York and Chicago
style by making fun of them.
These are tactical choices,
not to be confused with authorial voice,
which is a different concept entirely
an author's voice is their style,
it's much more consistent across topics,
whereas a tone is specific to a topic.
So I might have an authorial voice,
that uses a lot of goofy wordplay,
but I use a sympathetic
tone to talk about bears
and a hostile tone to talk
about, I don't know, whales,
yeah, boo whales, I said it.
I do not actually hate
whales, I love whales.
But my point is this, use
your knowledge of words,
of the connotation and
implications of the language,
that an author might use
to unlock your
understanding of their tone,
because if you can do that, my friend,
you can learn anything, David out.
