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Name that Invention: Examining Connotation and Sound
Understanding Poetry
Document Type
Teacher Resource
Publication Date
6-11-2012
Disciplines
Abstract
This exercise engages students with questions of diction, connotation, and sound patterns. Students discuss the field of product branding, and learn how much certain product names (e.g., Blackberry, Pentium, Swiffer) were considered in light their denotative, connotative, and aural elements. Then, in groups, students devise product names for four imagined products; afterward, as a class they debate the virtues of each name rate and choose a winner for each product. Such close attention to meanings, buried implications, and sound cues encourages students to adopt a very poetic form of word analysis, a skill that transfers nicely to more literary areas.
Citation Information
Dan Gleason. "Name that Invention: Examining Connotation and Sound" (2012) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/dan_gleason/11/