Fason's AP English Language Class: Rhetorical Devices and Terms: Basic List
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| Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds or any vowel sounds within a formal grouping, such as a poetic line or stanza, or in close proximity in prose. | ||||
| Abstract | Not related to the concrete properties of an object; pertaining to ideas, concepts, or qualities, as opposed to physical attributes. | ||||
| Analytical | A style of writing in which the subject is broken into its writing components and the components are subjected to detailed scrutiny, | ||||
| Anecdote | A brief story or tale told by a character in a piece of literature. | ||||
| Antagonist | Character or force in a literary work that opposes the main character or protagonist. | ||||
| Argumentation | One of the four modes of discourse. It seeks to convince the reader of the truth or falseness of an idea. | ||||
| Audience | The person(s) reached by a piece of writing. | ||||
| Claim | An assertion of something as fact; to demand as a right or as due. | ||||
| Closure | Bringing to an end or conclusion. | ||||
| Coherence | Indicates an orderly relationship among the parts in a whole essay or other literary work. | ||||
| Conclusion | Refers to sentences, paragraphs, or longer sections of an essay that bring the work to a logial or psychologically satisfying end. | ||||
| Concrete | Language that presents images that are accessible to the senses: solid, visible, tangible; audible. | ||||
| Connotation | What is implied by a word. | ||||
| Contradiction | A direct opposition between things compared; inconsistency. | ||||
| Convention | An accepted manner, model, or tradition. | ||||
| Denotation | The dictionary definition of a word. | ||||
| Description | A mode of discourse aimed at bringing something to life by telling how it looks, sounds, tates, smells, feels, or acts. Primarily used to enhyance the other modes of discourse and is seldom an end in itself. | ||||
| Diction | An author's choice of words to convey a tone or effect. | ||||
| Emphasis | It makes the most important ideas, characters, themes, or other elements stand out. | ||||
| Proportion, position, repetition, focus, and mechanical devices. | What are the five ways to add emphasis? | ||||
| Proportion | Saying more about the major issues than the minor issues. | ||||
| Position | Placing important material in the key spots, the beginning or ends of paragraphs or larger units; cilmatic order | ||||
| Repetition | Repeating something. | ||||
| Focus | Pruning of verbal underbrush and unnecessary detail to accentuate the main features. | ||||
| Mechanical Devices | Includes using capitalization, underlining, italics, exclamation points to convey enthusiasm, excitement, and emphasis. | ||||
| Essay | A nonfiction composition on a central theme or subject that is usually brief and written in prose. | ||||
| Descriptive, narrative, analytic, and argumentative. | What are different essay "modes?" | ||||
| Etymology | Information about the origin and history of words. | ||||
| Evidence | Supporting information that explains or proves a point. | ||||
| Exposition | A mode of discourse that exposes information through explaining, defining, or interpreting its subject. | ||||
| Figurative Language | Language that implies or indicates some other, usually greater, meaning; not literal. | ||||
| Flashback | Retrospection, where an earlier even is inserted into the normal chronology of a narrative. | ||||
| Foreshadow | To hint at or present things to come in a story or play. | ||||
| Formal Language | Language that is lofty, dignifies, or impersonal. | ||||
| Informal/ colloquial language | Language similar to everyday speech. | ||||
| General and Specific | The ends of a continuum that designates the relative degree of abstractness or concreteness of a word. | ||||
| Imagery | The sensory details or figurative language used to describe, arouse emotion, or represent abstractions. | ||||
| Introduction | The beginning of a written work that is likey to present the author's subject, focus, attitude, and the plan for organization. | ||||
| 1. State the thesis or topic emphatically; 2. Present a controversial or startling focus on the topic; 3. offer a witty or dramatic quotation, statement, metaphor, or analogy; 4. Provide background information to help readers understand the subject, | List 6 things an effective introduction may do. | ||||
| Irony | A situation or statment characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant. | ||||
| Literal | The strict meaning of a word or words; Not figurative or exaggerated. | ||||
| Mood | The feeling or ambience resulting from the tone of a piece as well as the writer's attitude and point of view. | ||||
| Narration | One of the four modes of discourse. It recounts an event or series of interrelated events. The relaying of what happened to someone or something. | ||||
| Narrative | A form of writing that tells a story. | ||||
| Objective | Refers to the writer's presentation of information in a personally detached, unemotional way. | ||||
| Onomatopoeia | A word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes, such as buzz or hiss. | ||||
| Opening | The first part or beginning of a piece of writing. | ||||
| Overstatement | Exaggerated language. | ||||
| Point of View | The view the reader gets of the action and charaters in a story. | ||||
| Plot | The cause-and-effect relationship between events that tell a story. The writer's plan for showing how the occurrence of these events actually brings about a certain effect. It lets the reader see how actions and events are integral parts of something mo | ||||
| Prose | The ordinary form of writtten language without metrical structure. | ||||
| Protagonist | The main character in a literary work. | ||||
| Purpose | The author's reason for writing. | ||||
| Setting | The time and place of the action in a literary work. | ||||
| Simile | A direct comparison between two things- it usually uses "like" or "as." | ||||
| 1. To evaluate the sum of the choices an author makes in blending diction, syntax, figurative language, and other literary devices. 2. To classify authors to a group in order to compare one author to another, similar author. (This allows one to see ho | List the two purposes of style. | ||||
| Summary | A condensation of main ideas from a given work that is uaully much shorter than the origianl. It seeks to reaveal only the major points an author has made in a piece of writing. | ||||
| Theme | The central or dominant idea or concern of a work; the main idea or meaning. | ||||
| Thesis statement | Focus statment of an essay; premise statement upon which the point of view or discussion in the essay is based. | ||||
| Voice | The acknowledged or unacknowledge soure of words of the story, the speaker. |
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Created by:
dlazyjs
on 2004-09-05