Two Sources on Concrete and Abstract Language

Abstract

The opposite of concrete -- general ideas like love and justice,or "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," rather than physical tangibles like stone, house, frog." (Frye, et al. 2)

Abstract Language

The word abstract derives from the Latin abstractus, which means "removed from." The term is conventionally employed to describe ideas and words that are removed from material reality. In speaking of language or diction, conventional linguists employ the term abstract to identify words that are used to refer to concepts rather than concrete or physical reality. Whereas words such as girl, forest, and stone are commonly used to refer to persons, places, and objects, words such as love, peace, and steadfastness are more often employed to express ideas or emotions. In Wordsworth's sonnet entitled "London, 1802" (published in 1807), for example, the speaker addresses himself to the soul of John Milton and pleads for the restoration of the qualities of greatness associated with a bygone era:

... We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Rather than pleading with the ghost of Milton to give his countrymen quantities of material goods, Wordsworth calls on him to bestow the more abstract qualities of "virtue, freedom, power." (Barton and Hudson 2-3)

Concrete

Possessing physical existence, capable of being experienced by the senses; the opposite of abstract. Many concrete words or phrases can be defined by touching, pointing, or acting: chair, sun, skate on ice. In practice, abstract terms may be used concretely, as in "this beauty" for a specific beautiful object, and conctete terms may be used abstractly as in "my house" for a dwelling planned but not yet built. (Frye, et al. 2)

Concrete Language

The word concrete derives from the Latin verb concrescere, meaning "to grow together, harden." In discussing diction, it is useful to oppose concrete language with abstract language. Whereas abstract words such as love, peace, and steadfastness are used to express ideas or emotions, concrete diction is used to refer to particular persons, places, and objects: girl, forest, stone. Concrete language names or describes the perceptible and material world; that is to say, concrete diction appeals to or engages the senses.

Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty" (1918) offers an example of concrete diction in poetry:

Glory be to God for dappled things-
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pierced-fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

Hopkins clearly revels in language that appeals to the visual sense. These lines offer specific, material examples of "dappled things."

The opening lines of Gary Soto's "History" (1977) offer another example of concrete diction:

Grandma lit the stove.
Morning sunlight
Lengthened in spears
Across the linoleum floor.
Wrapped in a shawl,
Her eyes small
With sleep,
She sliced papas,
Pounded chiles
With a stone
Bought from Guadalajara.

Instead of describing his subject as an early riser, Soto uses a language of specificity and sensory appeal: "Her eyes small / With sleep." Likewise, rather than merely indicating that she prepared food, the speaker describes her activities in concrete terms: "She sliced papas, / Pounded chiles / With a stone..."

The differences between abstract and concrete language are also observable in prose. The opening chapter,of Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native (1878) describes Egdon Heath as "a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity." The language of this description is abstract, attributing to the landscape qualities that are not tangible. By contrast, the following excerpt from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) manifests Huck's pleasure in the material objects he finds in an abandoned house floating down the Mississippi River:

We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a brand-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candies, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule of needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and fishline as thick as my little finger, with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a horse-shoe....

In Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Jean Rhys employs concrete diction to describe a garden in Jamaica:

Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered--then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purple, wonderful to see.

As these passages demonstrate, concrete language serves to engage the senses, whereas abstract language proves more suitable to analysis and commentary. (Barton and Hudson 40-41)

Works Cited

Frye, Northrop, Sheridan Baker and George Perkins. The Harper Handbook to         Literature. New York: Harper and Row, 1985.

Barton, Edwin J. and Glenda A. Hudson. A Contemporary Guide to Literay         Terms with Strategies for Writing Essays About Literature. Boston:         Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Take Note

For simplicity in punctuation and documentation, I have treated each of the passages above as if it were a long indented passage in the body of a paper. See examples of this in chapter 47 of The Little Brown Handbook.

If you use these sources in defining the terms in your essay, use the works cited entries above.

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