What attitudes and claims will meet with their approval? What will offend them? What objections may they have to my ideas, and how can I anticipate and counter those objections? | For more material and information please visit 252 DICTION charged in such a context. More positive would be a stout or plump man with rosy cheeks. Levels of Usage Levels of usage refers to the kind of situation in which a word is normally used. Most words suit all occasions. Some however are restricted to formal literary contexts and others to informal colloquial ones. Consider three verbs which roughly mean the same thing exacerbate annoy bug. Talking among your friends you would not be likely to say That person really exacerbated me. On the other hand describing a historical episode you wouldn t or shouldn t write The Spartan demands bugged the Athenians. But you could use annoy on both occasions without arousing derision in either friends or readers of your work. The three words differ considerably in their levels of usage. Exacerbate is a literary word appropriate to formal occasions. Bug in this sense is a colloquial even slang term appropriate to speech and very informal writing. Annoy is an all-purpose word suitable for any occasion. When in the next chapter we discuss the practical problem of appropriateness we shall use the labels formal informal and general to distinguish these broad levels of usage. From the more theoretical viewpoint we are taking here we may think of level of usage as a peripheral part of a word s connotation. As with connotation in general it is not easy to look up the level of usage of any particular word. Dictionaries label an occasional term colloquial or slang but not in every case and they do not label formal words like exacerbate at all. You have to depend on your own knowledge as a guide. In recent years the line between formal and informal usage has blurred considerably though not enough for Spartans to bug Athenians . The distinction still exists however and careful writers pay attention to it. For more material and information please visit MEANING 253 Telic Modes of Meaning Finally
