Diction
Your diction is simply your choice of words. There is no single, correct diction in the English language; instead, you choose different words or phrases for different contexts:
- To a friend
- "a screw-up"
- To a child
- "a mistake"
- To the police
- "an accident"
- To an employer
- "an oversight"
All of these expressions mean the same thing -- that is, they have the same denotation -- but you would not likely switch one for the other in any of these three situations: a police officer or employer would take "screw-up" as an insult, while your friends at the bar after a hockey game would take "oversight" as an affectation.
Written by David Megginson