Terms : Hide Images
| 14688775008 | Abstract Language | Refers to things that are hard to define, or that can be defined in more than one way. Abstract ideas can mean one thing to me and another to you. An example of an abstraction is, "That's interesting," which means many things. What does "interesting" mean? | 0 | |
| 14688775009 | Ad homonym | Latin for "against the man." When a writer personally attacks his or her opponents instead of their argument or the issue. This fallacy draws attention away from the real issues. Example: Don't vote for William Smith. He has been married three times. | 1 | |
| 14688775010 | Ad populum | An appeal to the prejudices of the masses that asserts if many believe it, then it is so. The assumption here is that if everyone is going to agree with me, then I don't really need to support my claim with any evidence. Just because a lot of people believe something, that doesn't necessarily make it true. Example: Politicians often want whatever the American people want, as if everyone wants/believes the same thing. | 2 | |
| 14688775011 | Allegory | A narrative or description with a secondary or symbolic meaning underlying the literal meaning. Satirists sometimes use allegory because it allows them a way to indirectly attack their satirical target. Swift's Gulliver's Travels is an example. | 3 | |
| 14690750128 | Alliteration | The repetition at close intervals of initial identical constant sounds. Or, vowel sounds in successive words or syllables that repeat. | 4 | |
| 14690756970 | Allusion | An indirect reference to something (usually a literary text) with which the reader is expected to be familiar. Allusions are usually literary, historical, Biblical, or mythological. | 5 | |
| 14690785490 | Ambiguity | An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way. Also, the manner of expression of an event or situation may be ambiguous. Artful language may be ambiguous. Unintentional ambiguity is usually vagueness. | 6 | |
| 14690795834 | Anachronism | Assignment of something to a time when it was not in existence, e.g. the watch Merlyn wore in The Once and Future King. | 7 | |
| 14690800465 | Analogy | An analogy is a comparison to a directly parallel case. When a writer uses an analogy, he or she argues that a claim reasonable for one case is reasonable for the analogous case. | 8 | |
| 14690807001 | Anaphora | Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row. This device is a deliberate form of repetition and helps make the writer's point more coherent. | 9 | |
| 14690815711 | Anecdote | A short narrative of an amusing, unusual, revealing or interesting even. Usually, the anecdote is combined with other material such as expository essays or arguments to clarify abstract points or to create a memorable image. Anecdotal: evidence that relies on observations, presented in narrative. | 10 | |
| 14690825255 | Antithesis | The opposite of an idea used to emphasize a point; the juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas. Hope is the antithesis of despair. | 11 | |
| 14690831269 | Balanced Antithesis | A figure of speech in which sharply contrasting ideas are juxtaposed in a balanced or parallel phrase or grammatical structure, as in To err is human; to forgive, divine. | 12 | |
| 14690837313 | Aphorism | A concise statement designed to make a point or illustrate a commonly held belief. For example, "Early to bed, early to rise make a man healthy, wealthy and wise." - Ben Franklin | 13 | |
| 14690843035 | Apostrophe | An address to the dead as if living; to the inanimate as if animate; to the absent as if present; to the unborn as if alive. Examples: "O Julius Caesar thou are mighty yet; thy spirit walks abroad," or "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll." | 14 | |
| 14690854442 | Appeal to Tradition | This fallacy is apparent when the arguer suggests a course of action that is correct "because we've always done it this way." Just because something is traditionally true, that does not make it right or effective. Example: We arrange desks in a classroom in orderly rows. Any other way has not been proven effective. | 15 | |
| 14690862890 | Archetype | A term borrowed by psychologist Carl Jung who described archetypes as "primordial images" formed by repeated experiences in the lives of our ancestors, inherited in the "collective unconscious" of the human race and expressed in myths, religion, dreams, fantasies, and literature. These "images" of character, plot pattern, symbols recur in literature and evoke profound emotional responses in the reader because they resonate with an image already existing in our unconscious mind, e.g. death, rebirth. | 16 | |
| 14690866579 | Argumentation | Exploring of a problem by investigating all sides of it; persuasion through reason. One of the four chief forms of discourse, the others being exposition, narration, and description. The purpose of argumentation is to convince by establishing the truth of falsity of a proposition. | 17 | |
| 14690867755 | Assertion | The claim or point the author is making. | 18 | |
| 14690869204 | Asyndeton | A series of words separated by commas (with no conjunction), e.g. "I came, I saw, I conquered." or "He was brave, fearless, afraid of nothing." The parts of the sentence are emphasized equally; in addition, the use of commas with no intervening conjunction speeds up the flow of the sentence. | 19 |
