Language - Part 5 of the Literary Elements Series
The Literary Elements Series: Part 5 of 5
Element #5 - Language
The fifth and final literary element of this series is Language. The language we use when we communicate with our audience conveys and creates many different facets of our brand story.
I’m a big fan of fabric and fibre arts, so I like to think of our content stories as unique tapestries we can design and weave into a picture that authentically represents our brand.
If character, setting, theme, and plot are the warp and weft of the fabric - that is, those threads that go up and down or side to side - then language is the golden thread that adds both strength and aesthetic appeal throughout.
Language is used to express Voice, Tone, Style, and Mood.
Voice
Voice encompasses the point of view - that is, who is talking or telling the story. It demonstrates personality.
Your brand may have one main voice, especially if you are a coach, speaker, or small business owner, where you are your brand. But other voices can also be beneficial.
The voice of a delighted client (we often refer to those as testimonials). The voice of your ideal client (sometimes called a Dream Client Avatar). For larger companies, you may have the voice of a character or mascot or even a celebrity endorser. Think Tony the Tiger from Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes or Michael Jordan and Nike.
When you are speaking for your brand, especially when you are your brand’s main voice, you need to ensure that your voice is consistent. The best way to ensure consistency is to be authentic.
Tone
Tone is your attitude toward what you are talking about. In most cases, you will be writing or speaking about your:
Brand
Prospects
Current clients
Past clients
Partners or colleagues
Offering
You may also provide commentary or insights on industry news, challenges, or innovations.
Tone is achieved through word choice, sentence structure, and which points you choose to emphasise. If I was going to write a car commercial, I could make it nostalgic, dramatic, or light-hearted.
Nostalgia: Remember the freedom you felt the first time you got behind the wheel…
Dramatic: Our new sports model gives you the power of zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds…
Light-hearted: When you want to focus on the scenery and your playlist, let us take care of the maintenance…
For more advanced content creation, you could even experiment with the use of sarcasm or exaggeration.
Sarcasm: For all those who thought we couldn’t combine luxury and performance in an affordable sedan…
Exaggeration: You could even launch our car into space. (Wait, that one actually did happen!)
Style
Most speakers, coaches, and entrepreneurs would want to aim for a casual tone as their style. You definitely want to be friendly but maintain a minimum level of business professionalism, like you would speak to a business connection or prospective client over coffee. An informal chat with boundaries.
Word choice affects your style, particularly in the difference between denotation and connotation. When it comes to the definition of a word, denotation is the strict dictionary definition. However, the connotation can be very different.
Connotation is the implied subtext commonly associated with the word, especially in current popular culture, and may carry significant emotional weight. These pop culture meanings often outweigh the dictionary definitions in the minds of your audience.
This is just one more reason to do a deep dive into your ideal client and be very clear about who you are talking to. What meanings will they understand and relate to? Be very aware that your audience may read between the lines or words, which is great when you want them to - they can feel very included when they “get” your story or meaning. But be careful they don’t feel left out, misinformed, or offended.
Let’s take the word office, which Dictionary.com defines as “a room, set of rooms, or building where the business of a commercial or industrial organization or of a professional person is conducted.” That’s the denotation.
What connotations can we come up with? Some negative ones might be:
The place where my boss is always nagging me.
The place where I need to avoid unwanted advances from Harriet in accounting.
The place where I feel like an imposter and wonder when they’ll figure out I don’t know what I’m doing.
Some positive connotations might be:
The place where I feel inspired by collaborations with my team.
The place where I feel like I’m making a difference or helping people.
The place where I feel creative and talented.
And if we pay attention to sitcoms and soap operas, an office is:
A place where no one does any work,
Management is always unfair, negative, and pretty much evil, and
Everyone is always having sex with everyone else, regardless of company policy, office hierarchy or individual relationship status.
See how the various connotations can drastically affect that neutral dictionary definition?
Mood
Mood is the overall feeling you leave with your audience. It’s very important because the feelings the audience gets from your content is the way they connect to your brand story.
Mood can be communicated through word choice as well as through figurative language and literary devices, such as imagery, metaphor, or irony.
Thinking again about our car commercial, there’s a difference between a scene about being stuck in a traffic jam versus a scene of driving on a long stretch of open highway.
Irony happens when what is actually happening is in direct contrast to the expected outcome. Because I love driving, let’s look at another car example. We see a sophisticated woman driving a luxury car at sunset, presumably on her way home from the office. We think she’s headed home for a luxurious bath and relaxing glass of wine, but when she drives over a hill, there’s a police roadblock. It would be even more ironic if the police are actually looking for that particular woman.
When you demonstrate the results your prospects will get or the amazing successes that your past and current clients have achieved, you want a mood that is calm, optimistic, and even joyful.
If your content is focused on the pain points or problems experienced by your ideal client, you want to create a mood of stress and frustration, even though that sounds counterintuitive. You want to create at least enough discomfort to motivate that prospect to seek change…by hiring you, of course!
How Language Is a Combination of Voice, Tone, Style and Mood
Voice, tone, style, and mood are all created with language. And they are all interconnected. Each one influences the others, and they all work together when you interact with your audience through the language of your content.
Your choice of language and how you use it can completely change how your audience understands and internalizes your story or message.
To give you an example, let me tell you a personal story.
A Story
I’ll relate this back to my grandfather again. If you’ve had the chance to read the other four parts in this series, you probably have a pretty good sense by now of the type of man he was.
You can imagine that since my grandfather loved to tell stories, he also appreciated the power and subtleties of language.
He had a rich and diverse vocabulary and was very well read and well spoken. I can remember him speaking very differently for different audiences.
When he told family history stories to me as a child, he made sure to use words that I could understand. And he would connect the story to me. For example, he would say, “your great-grandmother, who was my mother.” So it was clear that he wasn’t just telling a story about his own life - his own history - but a story that was also part of my life and my history. He demonstrated how the story was relevant to me.
As a teenager, I remember helping him prepare to give a speech at a black-tie dinner. His language was much more formal than when he told me stories. His speech was written out. And since he had no idea how to use a computer, I was tasked with typing out his notes in large font so that he could easily see them while standing at the podium. By using context and examples that were appropriate to the business audience along with some industry-appropriate humour, he created a mood of professional yet collegial connection.
In my very early 20s, not long before my grandfather passed away, he told me what he would have thought of as a “scandalous” story. In his opinion, I was finally old enough to hear this type of tale. He talked about a friend of his who’d been secretly married, and this marriage had come to light only when, one night when several couples were out to dinner, a condom had fallen out of the man’s pocket. Of course, the couple then had to disclose that they had been married for several months. My grandfather imbued the story with humour, his tone that of someone conveying a secret - a secret that was perhaps a little bit racy for his audience. In doing so, he included his audience in some preferential, exclusive group, providing access to privileged, specially designed content.
Lessons for Business
In business, language is important because it helps your ideal client feel that you are speaking directly to them.
Picture for a moment a large tapestry hanging on a wall. Think of a mediaeval castle if you’re having trouble with the scale. Those massive pieces of fabric were functional - they helped keep out the cold of the stone walls. They also looked beautiful, but there was often a purpose to that beauty. Tapestries could be used to show the history of a clan or family. They could demonstrate the values of that clan and perhaps display their coat of arms or motto. They could show snapshots of significant events or situations.
Imagine a tapestry for your business. It has 12 blocks or squares - space for 12 scenes or symbols that best represent your business. What would you put in those 12 squares? What image or situation can you show people that is relevant to their lives, relates to their values, and shows real, authentic people and situations? What will best help prospects come to know, like, and trust you?
Business Owner / CEO
As the business owner or CEO, you will create a brand guide (possibly with help from a marketing expert) that defines the language you use in your brand storytelling. This guide will talk about the voice or voices to be used, the tone and style to be written or spoken in, and the mood you want to induce in your ideal client to compel them to action.
Any member of your team will be able to reference this guide to ensure consistency of your brand voice and brand storytelling. Consistency is a huge part of creating an authentic connection with your desired audience.
Your Ideal Client
Your ideal client won’t necessarily realize that they’re reacting to your word choice or responding to imagery. Like Maya Angelou says, “...people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Plan and create your content to engineer how they feel in response to your content, your brand, and your offer.
What’s Next?
Spend some time making notes about language for both yourself and your ideal client. Think about the tapestry. Create a folder of images that represent your business. See if you can narrow it down to 12. What message are you really trying to convey? Is it effective?
I know we’ve talked about a lot of literary terminology today, and I don’t want to get stuck on fancy words. If you have any questions about anything in this blog series, please reach out to me. I’m always happy to talk about words and stories.
Let’s Wrap Up
The purpose of all the notes you took throughout this series is so you can put them together and look for common threads. Make a chart to keep on your wall when creating content. If you think abstractly, go with a flow chart or Venn diagram. If you’re more analytical, go with a spreadsheet. Look for words, phrases, images, and messages that are recurring. Use these to start creating guidelines for your brand.