![]() ![]() If you described someone as a spinster, the person to whom you're talking would be likely to form far more beliefs about her than that she is an unmarried woman who lives on her own: the description might, for instance, call to mind the idea of a lonely, unhappy, or unfulfilled life, although nothing in the dictionary meaning of 'spinster' implies any such idea. The literal meaning of the word 'spinster', for instance, is simply an unmarried woman who lives on her own: but to describe someone as a spinster is to imply far more about her life than this fact alone. The other component of meaning is known as connotation, and is usually understood as the set of associations that a word or phrase has. In general, the denotation of an expression is what we might call its 'dictionary' or 'objective' meaning. The situation with adjectives is slightly more confused, but we could say that adjectives such as 'yellow' or 'heavy' denote the quality of yellowness or heaviness. Nouns such as 'table' denote things such as, well, tables. Names, for instance, denote the person to whom they belong. One is what is called the denotation, or literal meaning, of that word or phrase - which we might think of as the actual thing or property to which the expression refers. When we say that a word, phrase, or symbol 'means' something, this is usually understood as consisting of two separate components. How can a song lyric say anything at all significant in so few words? In order to see how this is possible, we need to identify the two different senses in which those words can be said to have meaning. Connotation & DenotationĪn average novel contains around 100,000 words, whereas an average pop lyric probably contains somewhere between one and two hundred words - about the length of the average novel's back‑cover blurb. Indeed, as we saw in part two of this series, songs in the narrative mode actually do have to tell a story and while the lyric and dramatic modes are less similar to most prose writing, they still have to convey a feeling or message. Compared to a piece of prose such as a short story, most poems and song lyrics contain very few lines, yet the lyrics of a song may have to do as much 'work' as an entire story. Not only is the correct choice of individual words essential in order to achieve the sonic effects described last month, but it also determines how well your lyrics express the meaning you want to convey. The adage 'choose your words carefully' applies with special force to poetry and lyric writing. In other words, supposing we know what we want to say in a song, how can we express ourselves in a way that is true to our feelings and best conveys what those feelings are? ![]() This month, and in the next part of the series, it's time to consider the actual meaning of the words and phrases in song lyrics. Last month, I tackled metre and rhyme - phenomena that can make a verse, couplet, phrase or hook memorable simply because of the way it sounds when spoken or sung. In this series, I've been looking at some of the techniques poets use to analyse and write their material, and trying to show how they can help us understand what makes pop lyrics good or bad. This is the fourth article in a five‑part series. This month, Sam Inglis shows you how to improve your lyric writing by using fewer words to say more. ![]()
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