V is for Vocabulary

“Clarity before sophistication.”

- Mrs. Griffin, my year 7 English teacher

Two things, before we begin. First - please do not allow your perceived lack of a decent vocabulary paralyse you and prevent you from writing in the first place. Although a rich and well-stocked vocabulary may seem like the answer to all your troubles when you don’t know what or how to write, it is of little help when you have minimal understanding of the text to start with. Remember that style, musicality and sophistication is more than an amalgamation of exotic, polysyllabic words and that language and ideas go hand-in-hand.

To elaborate a little, here is an excerpt from my very first SAC (School Assessed Coursework) on Browning’s poetry which scored full marks despite my hopelessly strangled vocabulary.

“Submerged beneath the romantic, lyrical surface of Two in the Campagna is the speaker’s agonised attempt to capture an intangible force and render it tangible. The poem is imbued with a light, airy quality, evoked by the gentle, sibilants sounds of “endless fleece”, “silence” and “passion”, as well as the suspended sensation generated by “floating weft” and “feathery grasses”. The weightless quality of the poem mimics the intangibility of the speaker’s sentiments which he so desperately wishes to “hold”, while the exclamation behind “Help me to hold it!” emphasises the intensity of this desire. In stanza two, the imagery of grasping is paired with the notion of release, as the “thought” the speaker “touched” are “throw[n] …for rhymes to catch at and let go”. Thus, Browning suggests how the speaker’s thoughts can only be temporarily pinned down by the use of rhyme, rather than permanently secured, highlighting the linguistic limitations which contain the speaker in his desire to capture his thoughts and render them comprehensible.”

While I could perhaps polish the language a little so that it sparkles and shines a little more, it has fulfilled its primary role, which is to express an idea, clearly and with as much grace as possible.

Second - trust in the process, which is, really, quite simple: read, write, think, repeat. If you are unsure as to what to read to improve your writing for VCE Literature specifically, please check out our “Recommended Reading List” which can be found under the “Toolbox” section of the blog.

Now, let’s get down to business! (To defeat…the huns.)

1: Compile your own personal dictionary throughout the year which you can refer to as you write. Try to select words that are versatile and not too specialised, unless they are relevant to your texts (e.g. “hegemony” is a great word to use when analysing through a postcolonial lens, whilst “inaugurate” may not find its way into an essay as easily.)

2: Create an extensive list of synonyms for all your metalanguage (shows, suggests, repudiates, challenges etc etc.) While I recommend you to do this yourself, I have also put up my own list which I made in Year 12 under the “Toolbox” section.

3: Before writing, create a braindump of words relating to your topic. This will (a) save you countless trips to thesaurus.com and, consequently, hours of time and (b) generate ideas and patterns about the text which you can then explore in your analysis.

For example, if you are writing about fire imagery in a poem, you may want to brainstorm a list of words that are associated with fire:

flame, warmth, light, combust, destruction, illuminate, blaze, spark, ignite, heat, conflagration, burn, consume, flare, smoke, passion, fiery, zest, vigour, paradox, contradiction, ambiguity

As I look at this list, I may ponder on the different connotations of fire and the paradox it represents - on one hand, fire brings light and warmth; on the other hand, it consumes and destroys - a source of life as well as a weapon of destruction, [the poet’s] use of fire imagery highlights the speaker’s struggle to reconcile xyz…etc.

Hope this helped!

Until next time,

Dawnie