Concrete Language

On February 1, 1902 Langston was born in Joplin Missouri. He lived with his grandmother for the first thirteen years of his life in Mexico. He also spent a year at Columbia University, were he served as a merchant seaman and worked at a nightclub called Paris. Langston showed a couple of his poems to Dr. Alain Locke who was a pleader for African-American literature. Twenty-Four years later is when Langston published his first book which started off his career as a writer. Langston Hughes is a poet, writer and novelist. “Theme for English B” was published in 1926. The autobiographical work “Salvation” was written in 1940. Langston uses a lot of concrete and descriptive language in his work. Langston Hughes’s essay “Salvation” uses detailed descriptions to impact the reader. Description is “a sketch or account of anything in words; a portraiture or representation in language; an enumeration of the essential qualities of a thing or species” (“description”). Authors use concrete language to influence readers. Concrete language is “based off the five senses which are hearing taste, sight, touch, and smell” (“Concrete”). Hughes uses tactile, visual, and aural senses. Hughes descriptive words in order for readers feel exactly what he describes in his writing. For instance, in paragraph four he “old women with jet-black hair faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands” (Stubbs and Barnet 236). He wants us to visualize the dark-skinned women with braids in their hair and the old with curled up hands that have been through rough situations. He also uses visual sense to help us visualize what he saw. For example, he states “Women leaped in the air” (Stubbs and Barnet 236). You can actually picture women in the air with the help of his descriptive words. Also, concrete language helps the readers to feel and visualize what’s going on in the story. Concrete language makes the words come to life so you can visualize and feel what’s going on in the story.