Warm Up
Take out Langston Hughes’s essay, “The Negro Artist & The Racial Mountain.”
Scan through the essay and choose your favorite line. Write in your notebook with a 2-3 sentence explanation of why it is your favorite.
Today’s Game Plan
Three more Langston Hughes poems
View Hughes reading
The Weary Blues, click here.
Considering Diction
Diction is the writer's choice of vocabulary, use of verb tense and style of narration.
It could also be said that the tone of a text is established through use of diction.
Diction: Ranking Words
One way to come to understand diction is by discussing the importance of each word in a poem.
Debriefing:
Which word did you rank the most important?
What controversy did your group experience?
How does the diction impact the poem’s tone?