Generalizations never work, especially when trying to apply them on a country formed into regions with a strong cultural identity like Italy is. Howev

Connotation in L2 teaching is underrated and it makes me sad

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2021-07-13 10:00:07

Generalizations never work, especially when trying to apply them on a country formed into regions with a strong cultural identity like Italy is.

However, there’s one thing that every1 Italian share, that is overestimating their linguistic abilities. Anyone who received formal education after 20042 will tell you that they know English, and yet they would “hear the music” while actively listening to it or tell you how “funny” you are.

Why is this happening? We’ve been studying English for more than ten years, did the educational system failed us? Maybe, or maybe we just need to get acquainted with one linguistic concept: connotation.

The meaning of every word includes two different dimensions, known as denotation and connotation. While denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word, such as the meaning one could find on the dictionary, the concept of connotation is used to refer to the cultural associations bound to the meaning of a word.

In fact, people understand and interact with meaning in terms of how they perceive it and their word selection process is guided by the cultural implications they think a word has. For example, in the following dialogue the use of the adjective “picky” is instrumental to convey the fact that Cher’s being too hard to please and the characters show to be aware of its connotation, since they suggest a politically correct substitution.

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