Rhetorical Terms and Definitions for Mrs. Martenson's AP Language and Composition Class.
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| 3781820272 | Allegory | The device of using character and/or story elements symbolically to represent an abstraction in addition to the literal meaning. In some allegories for example, an author may intend the characters to personify an abstraction like hope or freedom. The allegorical meaning usually deals with moral truth or a generalization about human existence. | 0 | |
| 3781820273 | Alliteration | The repetition of sounds, especially initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words (as in "she sells sea shells"). | 1 | |
| 3781820274 | Allusion | A direct or indirect reference to something which is presumably commonly known, such as an event, book, myth, place, or work of art; can be historical (like referring to Hitler), literary (like referring to Kurtz in Heart of Darkness), religious (like referring to Noah and the flood). | 2 | |
| 3781820275 | Ambiguity | The Multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, or a word, phrase, sentence or passage. | 3 | |
| 3781820276 | Anadiplosis | The repetition of a key word, especially the last one, at the beginning of the next sentence or clause. For example, "He gave his life; life was all he could give." | 4 | |
| 3781820277 | Analogy | A similarity or comparison between tow different things or the relationship between them; can explain something unfamiliar by associating it with or pointing out its similarity to something more familiar. | 5 | |
| 3781820279 | Anaphora | The rhetorical device of repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences for emphasis and rhythm. | 6 | |
| 3781820280 | Anathema | A thing or person accursed or damned; a thing or person greatly detested; a formal curse or condemnation excommunicating a person from a church or damning something; any strong curse. | 7 | |
| 3781820281 | Antecedent | The word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun. The AP language exam occasionally asks for the antecedent of a given pronoun in a long complex sentence or in a group of sentences. | 8 | |
| 3781820282 | Anticlimax | Using a sequence of ideas that abruptly diminish in dignity or importance at the end of a sentence, generally for satirical effect. | 9 | |
| 3781820283 | Antimetabole | Repeating words in reverse order for surprise and emphasis. Same as Chiasmus. | 10 | |
| 3781820284 | Antithesis | A contrast or opposition of thoughts, usually in two phrases, clauses, or sentences. For example, You are going; I am staying. The exact opposite (Joy is the antithesis of sorrow). | 11 | |
| 3781820285 | Aphorism | A terse statement of known authorship which expresses a general truth or a moral principle. (If the authorship is unknown, the statement is generally considered to be a folk proverb). | 12 | |
| 3781820286 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a personified abstraction, such as liberty or love. The effect may add familiarity or emotional intensity. William Wordsworth addresses John Milton as he writes, "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee. | 13 | |
| 3781820287 | Archetype | The original pattern, or model from which all other things of the same kind of thing are made; a perfect example of a type or group. | 14 | |
| 3781820288 | Assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds in a series of words; e.g., the words "cry and "side" have the same vowel sound and so are said to be in assonance. | 15 | |
| 3781820289 | Asyndeton | The practice of leaving out the usual conjunctions between coordinate sentence elements. For example: smile, shake hands, part. | 16 | |
| 3781820290 | Atmosphere | The emotional mood created by the entirety of the literary work, established partly by the setting and partly by the author's choice of objects that are described. Even such elements as a description of the weather can contribute to the atmosphere. Frequently, atmosphere foreshadows events. | 17 | |
| 3781820291 | Attitude | The position or posture assumed in connection with an action, feeling, mood. For example, to kneel in an attitude of prayer. Also a manner of acting, feeling or thinking that shows one's disposition, opinion or mental set, etc. | 18 | |
| 3781820292 | Balanced Sentence | The phrases or clauses balance each other by virtue of their likeness in structure, meaning, or length: e.g., He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. | 19 | |
| 3781820293 | Bathos | An abrupt change from the lofty to the ordinary or trivial in writing or speech; anticlimax. | 20 | |
| 3781820295 | Cacophony | Harsh sounding, jarring sound; dissonance. | 21 | |
| 3781820296 | Caesura | A pause or break in the middle of a line of poetry | 22 | |
| 3781820298 | Clause | A grammatical unit that contains both a subject and a verb. | 23 | |
| 3781820299 | Cliche | An overused, worn-out, hackneyed expression that used to be fresh but is no more. " | 24 | |
| 3781820301 | Colloquial | The use of slang or informalities in speech or writing. Not generally acceptable for formal writing,; give a work a conversational, familiar tone; expressions in writing include local and regional dialects. | 25 | |
| 3781820302 | Complex Sentence | contains one principal clauses and one subordinate clause: e.g., You said that you would tell the truth. | 26 | |
| 3781820303 | Compound Sentence | sentence contains two independent clauses joined by a coordinate conjunction (and, but, or) or by a semicolon: e.g., The singer bowed to the audience, but she sang no encores. | 27 | |
| 3781820304 | Compound-Complex Sentence | sentence contains two or more principal clauses and one or more subordinate clauses: e.g., The singer bowed while the audience applauded, but she sang no encores. | 28 | |
| 3781820305 | Conceit | A fanciful expression, usually in the form of an extended metaphor or surprising analogy between seemingly dissimilar objects. | 29 | |
| 3781820306 | Connotation | The nonliteral, associative meaning of a word; the implied, suggested meaning. | 30 | |
| 3781820307 | Consonance | The repetition of a constant sound within a series of words to produce a harmonious effect: e.g., And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. | 31 | |
| 3781820308 | Cumulative sentence | An independent clause followed by a series of subordinate constructions that gather details about a person, place, event, or idea | 32 | |
| 3781820310 | Declarative Sentence | A sentence that makes a statement: e.g., The king is sick. | 33 | |
| 3781820311 | Denotation | The strict, literal, dictionary definition of a word, devoid of any emotion, attitude, or color. | 34 | |
| 3781820313 | Diction | Related to style, refers to the writer's word choices, especially with regard to their correctness, clearness, or effectiveness. | 35 | |
| 3781820314 | Didactic | From the Greek, didactic literally means "teaching" | 36 | |
| 3781820318 | Ellipsis | The omission of a word or words necessary for complete grammatical construction but understood in the context. | 37 | |
| 3781820320 | Epanalepsis | Opening and closing a sentence with the same word or praise for surprise and emphasis. For example, Buster is deeply concerned to promote the health and well being of Buster. | 38 | |
| 3781820323 | Epistles | A literary letter, is a formal composition written in the form of a letter addressed to a distant person or group of people. | 39 | |
| 3781820324 | Epitagh | An inscription on a tomb or gravestone in memory of the person buried there; short composition in prose or verse, written in attribute to a person. | 40 | |
| 3781820325 | Euphemism | Form the Greek for "good speech," a more agreeable or less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept. | 41 | |
| 3781820326 | Euphony | The quality of having a pleasant sound; pleasant combination of agreeable sounds. | 42 | |
| 3781820328 | Extended Metaphor | A metaphor developed at great length , occurring frequently in or throughout a work. | 43 | |
| 3781820330 | Figurative Language | Many compare dissimilar things. Figures of speech include, for example, apostrophe, hyperbole. Irony, metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia etc. | 44 | |
| 3781820331 | Genre | Kinds of types of literature. For example, poetry, drama, novel, short story, nonfiction, etc. | 45 | |
| 3781820332 | Homily | A solemn, moralizing talk or writing; a sermon | 46 | |
| 3781820333 | Hortative Sentence | A sentence meant to encourage | 47 | |
| 3781820334 | Hyperbole | An overstatement or exaggerated way of saying something. Example: "This book weighs a ton." | 48 | |
| 3781820336 | Imagery | Anything in a literary work that calls up sensations of sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing. | 49 | |
| 3781820337 | Infer/Inference | To conclude or decide from something known or assumed; derive by reasoning. | 50 | |
| 3781820338 | Invective | A violent verbal attack; strong criticism, curses; an abusive term. | 51 | |
| 3781820339 | Inverted order of a sentence | This involves constructing a sentence so the predicate comes before the subject: e.g., In California grow oranges. This is a device in which normal sentence patterns are reversed to create an emphatic or rhythmic effect. | 52 | |
| 3781820340 | Imperative sentence | A sentence that commands | 53 | |
| 3781820341 | Irony | In general, an implied contrast. | 54 | |
| 3781820342 | Juxtaposition | a poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, creating an effect of surprise and wit: e.g., "The apparition of these face sin the crowd;/petals on a wet, black bough." | 55 | |
| 3781820345 | Litotes | Ironical understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary | 56 | |
| 3781820346 | Loose Sentence | makes sense if brought to a close before the actual ending: e.g., We reached Edmonton/ that morning/ after a turbulent flight/ and some exciting experiences | 57 | |
| 3781820348 | Metaphor | A comparison, like a simile but usually implied and without a comparative word such as like or as. Example: "My heart is a singing bird"; "He wolfed his food" | 58 | |
| 3781820349 | Metonymy | The use of the name of one thing for that of another associated with or suggested by it. For example "the White House" of the "President." | 59 | |
| 3781820352 | Mood | The atmosphere of the literary work. In verbs, an expression of the manner in which the action is done. The three in English are indicative, the most common, which states the action is an actual fact ("Tony hit the ball"), imperative, stating a command ("Tony, hit the ball!"). A third, the subjunctive, is now rare in English. It is used to express a wish or a conditional statement: "If I were you...", "It is required that the applicant be under twenty-one." | 60 | |
| 3781820353 | Motif | A main theme or subject. | 61 | |
| 3781820355 | Narrative | The telling of any story, or the story itself, the plot. | 62 | |
| 3781820358 | Onomatopoeia | The use of words that sound like what they mean. Buzz, clang, and hiss are onomatopoeia. | 63 | |
| 3781820359 | Oxymoron | A figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory ideas or terms are combined; for example: thunderous silence, sweet sorrow and jumbo shrimp are oxymorons. | 64 | |
| 3781820360 | Parable | A brief story, usually with human characters, that teaches a moral lesson. The most famous parables are those told by Christ in the Bible. | 65 | |
| 3781820361 | Paradox | a statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd but that may actually be true in fact. | 66 | |
| 3781820362 | Parallelism | refers to a grammatical or structural similarity between sentences or parts of a sentence. It involves an arrangement of words, phrase, sentences, and paragraphs so that elements of equal importance are equally developed and similarly phrased: e.g., He was walking, running, and jumping for joy. I learned to swim, to play tennis, and to ride a horse. | 67 | |
| 3781820363 | Parody | A literary that imitates and makes fun of another type of work, or specific author. | 68 | |
| 3781820364 | Pedantic | An unnecessary display of scholarship lacking in judgment or sense of proportion. | 69 | |
| 3781820366 | Periodic Sentence | makes sense only hen the end of the sentence is reached. E.g., that morning, after a turbulent flight and some exciting experiences, we reached Edmonton. | 70 | |
| 3781820367 | Personification | The treatment of an object or an abstract idea as if it were a person, as in Tennyson's "Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white," and Shakespeare's "Time's cruel hand." | 71 | |
| 3781820368 | Point of View | In fiction, is the first person, second, or third the writer creates to tell the story to the reader. | 72 | |
| 3781820369 | Prose | The ordinary form of written or spoken language, without rhyme or meter; speech or writing that is not poetry. | 73 | |
| 3781820370 | Prosody | The science or art of versification, including the study of metrical structure, rhyme, stanza forms, etc. | 74 | |
| 3781820371 | Pun | play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings.ccan have serious as well as humorous uses: e.g., When Mercutio is bleeding to death in Romeo and Juliet, he says to his friends, "Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me grave man." | 75 | |
| 3781820372 | Repetition | A device in which words, sounds, and ideas are used more than once to enhance rhythm and create emphasis: e.g., "...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish form the earth" | 76 | |
| 3781820374 | Rhetorical Modes | Narrative, descriptive, expository & argumentative. | 77 | |
| 3781820375 | Rhetorical Question | a question that expects no answer. It is used to draw attention as a point and is generally stronger than the direct statement: e.g., "If Mr. Ferchoff is always fair, as you have said, why did he refuse to listen to Mr. Baldwing's arguments?" | 78 | |
| 3781820378 | Sarcasm | A taunting, sneering, cutting or caustic remark; gibe or jeer. | 79 | |
| 3781820379 | Satire | A literary work that ridicules various aspects of human behavior. Its purpose is often to correct certain faults, but underneath the surface it is sometimes pure personal attack. Gulliver's Travels and Animal Farm and both satires. | 80 | |
| 3781820381 | Semantics | The nature, structure, development and changes of the meanings of speech forms with contextual meaning. | 81 | |
| 3781820382 | Sentence Structure | How a speaker or author constructs a sentence affects what the audience understands. The inverted order of an interrogative sentence cues the reader or listener to a question and creates a tension between speaker and listener. Similarly short sentences ar e often emphatic, passionate or flippant, whereas longer sentences suggest the writer's thoughtful response. | 82 | |
| 3781820383 | Shift | A change of feelings by the speaker from the beginning to the end, paying particular attention to the conclusion of the literature. (Progression) | 83 | |
| 3781820384 | Simile | The comparison of two different things or ideas through the use of words like or as. It is a definitely stated comparison in which the poet says one thing is like another; e,g,, The warrior fought like a lion. | 84 | |
| 3781820385 | Simple Sentence | a simple sentence contains one subject and one verb: e.g., The singer bowed to her adoring audience. | 85 | |
| 3781820388 | Split order of a sentence" | This divides the predicate into two parts with the subject coming in the middle: e.g., In California oranges grow | 86 | |
| 3781820390 | Style | a group of different aspects of writing that have to do with the writer's way of saying something. Diction, sentence structure, figurative language, and various sound patterns all enter into style. | 87 | |
| 3781820391 | Symbol/Symbolism | A thing or action that is made to mean more than itself. A rose, for instance, is used to symbolize love. | 88 | |
| 3781820392 | Synecdoche | A form of a metaphor, In synecdoche , a part of something is used to signify the whole: e.g., All hands on deck. Also, the reverse, whereby the whole can represent a part, is synecdoche: e.g., Canada played the United States in the Olympic hockey finals. | 89 | |
| 3781820393 | Synesthetic Imagery | Detail that moves from the simulation of one sense to a response by another sense, as a certain odor induces the visualization of a certain color. Here the act of reading, a visual stimulus, produces sound. e.g., "the cinnamon beat of the music," "yellow cocktail music," "the sparkling odor of jonquils," etc. | 90 | |
| 3781820394 | Syntax | At its simplest level, syntax consists of sentence structure and word order, but analysis of style and meaning never relies on one concept alone. Syntax should not be studied in isolation, but rather it should be examined in conjunction with other stylistic techniques that work together to develop meaning. | 91 | |
| 3781820396 | Theme | What the author is saying bout the subjects in his work. | 92 | |
| 3781820397 | Tone | The writer's or speaker's attitude toward the subject and the audience. | 93 | |
| 3781820400 | Trite | is applied to something, especially a n expression or idea which through repeated use or application has lost its origin freshness. | 94 | |
| 3781820401 | Trope | A figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression | 95 | |
| 3781820403 | Understatement (meiosis) | The opposite of hyperbole. It is a king of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is: e.g., I could probably manage to survive on a salary of two million dollars a year. | 96 | |
| 3781820404 | Vernacular | Using the native language of a country or place; commonly spoken by the people of a particular country or place. | 97 | |
| 3781820405 | Vignette | A short, delicate literary sketch. | 98 | |
| 3781820406 | Zeugma | Figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses | 99 |
