| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Abstract | refers to language that describes concepts rather than concrete images |
| Ad Hominem | in an argument, this is an attack on the person rather than the opponent's ideas |
| Allegory | a narrative that functions on a symbolic level (Pilgrim's progress allegorizes the doctrines of Christian salvation) |
| Alliteration | the repetition of initial consonant sounds |
| Allusion | a reference contained in a work to something outside that work |
| Ambiguity | allows multiple meanings to coexist in a word or a metaphor; it doesn't mean that it isn't clear but that a good reader can see more than one possible interpretation at the same time |
| Anadiplosis | repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause "The crime was common, common be the pain" |
| Analogy | a literary device employed to serve as the basis for a comparison which assumes that what applies to the parallel situation also applies to the original circumstance |
| Anaphora | one of the devices of repetition in which the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences |
| Anastrope | inversion of the natural or usual word order to achieve emphasis by drawing attention to itself |
| Anecdote | a story or brief episode told by the writer or character to illustrate a point |
| Anticipating audience reaction | a rhetorical technique often used to convince an audience of the soundness of your argument by stating the arguments that one's opponent is likely to give and then answering these arguments even before that opponent has a chance to voice them |
| Antimetabole | repetition of words, in successsive clauses, in reverse grammatical order to reinforce antithesis (Ex: one should eat to live, not live to eat) |
| Antithesis | the presentation of two contrasting images emphasized by parallel structure "to be or not to be" |
| Aphorism | a concise statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words |
| Apostrophe | a thing is addressed directly, as though it were a person listening to the conversation |
| Argument | a single assertion or a series of assertions presented and defended by the writer |
| Assonance | a type of rhyme in which the vowels in the words are the same but the consonants aren't (how now brown cow) |
| Asyndeton | deliberate omission of conjunctions between a series of related clauses "I came, I saw, I conquered" |
| Attitude | the relationship an author has toward his or her subject and audience. It is closely linked to the tone. |
| Author's purpose | his goal in writing the selection (entertain, instruct, persuade, describe) |
| Autobiography | a person's story of his own life, it is nonfiction and describes key events in life |
| Balance | a situation in which all parts of the presentation are equal, whether in sentences, paragraphs, sections, etc. |
| Ballad | a story, often of love or adventure, told in song form |
| Biography | a true story about a person's life written by another person |
| Burlesque | any imitation of people or literary type that, by distortion, aims to amuse. It tends to ridicule faults, not serious vices. Its aim is amusement rather than the contempt or indignation of satire (the mock epic is one form and The Rape of the Lock a good example) |
| Call to action | writing that urges people to action or promotes change |
| Cacophony | harsh and discordant sounds in a line or passage in a literary work |
| Carpe diem | meaning "seize the day," is a Latin phrase that has become the name for a common literary motif in lyric poetry--life is short, so make the most of present pleasures |
| Characterization | techniques a writer uses to create and reveal fictional personalities in a work of literature, by describing the character's appearance, actions, thoughts, and feelings |
| Chiasmus | a type of balance in which the second part is balanced against the first but with the part reversed (Ex: "Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike") |
| Classification and Division | a method of sorting, grouping, collecting, and analyzing things by categories based on features shared by all members of a class or group is called classification. Division is a method of breaking down an entire whole into separate parts or sorting a group of items into non-overlapping categories |
| Cliché | overused phrases which have lost their ability to convey meaning |
| Colloquial expressions | the use of slang in writing, often to create local color and to provide an informal tone |
| Comic relief | the inclusion of a humorous character or scene to contrast with the tragic elements of a work, thereby intensifying the next tragic event |
| Comparison/Contrast | a rhetorical technique for pointing out similarities or differences. Writers may use a point-by-point method to interweave points of comparison or contrast between two things or a subject-by-subject method |
| Compound/Complex Sentence | a sentence that contains two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent/subordinate clause |
| Conceit | a long, complex metaphor which establishes a striking parallel between two apparently dissimilar things or situations |
| Connotation | the interpretive level of a word based on its associated images rather than literal meaning |
| Couplet | two related lines of poetry that often rhyme |
| Deduction | the process of moving from a general rule to a specific example |
| Definition | a method for specifying the basic nature of any phenomenon, idea, or thing |
| Denotation | the literal or dictionary meaning of a word |
| Dialect | the recreation of regional spoken language |
| Diction | the author's choice of words that creates tone, attitude, and style, as well as meaning |
| Didactic literature | writing whose purpose is to instruct or to teach, usually formal and focused on moral or ethical concerns |
| Doggerel | verse made comic because irregular metrics are made regular by stressing normally unstressed syllables |
| Doublespeak | in general, language used to distort and manipulate rather than communicate |
| Downplaying/Intensifying | methods of drawing attention and diverting attention |
| Dramatic monologue | the speaker is usually a fictional character caught at a critical moment directing his words to a silent audience. He reveals aspects of his personality of which he is unaware (Browning's "My Last Duchess" or Eliot's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" |
| Elegy | a poem that deals solemnly with death |
| Ellipsis | the omission of a word or words necessary for complete construction, but understood in the context |
| Emotional appeal | exploits the readers' feeling of pity or fear to make a case; this fallacy draws solely on the readers' pathos and not on logic |
| Epic | a long and serious narrative poem about a hero and his companions, often set in the past that is pictured as greater than the present (Beowulf, Iliad, Paradise Lost) |
| Epigram | originally meaning an "inscription," it became for the Greeks a short poem, usually solemn; for the Romans, it meant a short, witty poem with a string at the end. The term has come to mean any cleverly expressed thought in verse or prose |
| Epigraph | the use of a quotation at the beginning of a work that hints at its theme |
| Epiphany | the standard term for the description of the sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary object or scene, that moment with a character comes to understand something about himself or life |
| Epitaph | a burial inscription, usually serious but sometimes humorous |
| Essay | a brief prose writing on a particular subject or idea |
| Ethical appeal | is the most subtle and often the most powerful because it comes from character and reputation, not words. As a writer, your ethical appeal stems from your ability to convince your readers that you are a reliable, intelligent person who knows what you're talking about and cares about the issues. You have to know and respect your readers and be completely prepared |
| Eulogy | a poem praising the memory of a living or dead person |
| Euphemism | a more acceptable and usually more pleasant way of saying something that might be inappropriate or uncomfortable (he passed instead of he's dead or private parts for genitals) |
| Euphony | the pleasant, mellifluous presentation of sounds in a literary work |
| Exposition | writing that seeks to clarify, explain, or inform using one or several of the following methods: process analysis, definition, classification and division, comparison and contrast, and cause and effect analysis |
| Extended metaphor | a sustained composition, often referred to as a conceit, developed through a piece of writing |
| Figurative language | all the devices that enable the writer to operate on more than the literal level. This would include hyperbole, irony, metaphor, personification, and simile |
| Form | the shape or structure of a literary work |
| Hubris | a Greek word for a character's excessive pride, confidence, or arrogance which leads to downfall |
| Hyperbole | extreme and quite conscious exaggeration, often humorous, although it can also be ironic for effect. "His eloquence would split rocks" |
| Idiom | an expression whose meaning cannot be taken literally |
| Image | a verbal approximation of a sensory impression, concept, or emotion |
| Imagery | the total effect of related sensory images in a work |
| Induction | the process that moves from a given of specifics to a generalization |
| Inference | a conclusion one can draw from the presented detail |
| Intentional fallacy | the error of interpreting or evaluating a work by referring to the author's stated purpose, design, or intention for the work -- a work stands on its own merit, not authorial intention |
| Invective | a verbally abusive attack |
| Invocation | an address to a god or muse whose aid is sought |
| Irony | an unexpected twist or contrast between what happens and what was intended or expected to happen. Dramatic irony centers around the ignorance of those involved while the audience is aware of the circumstances |
| Isocolon | when the parallel elements are similar not only in structure but in length (that is, the same number of words, even the same number of syllables) "His purpose was to impress the ignorant, to perplex the dubious, and to confound the scrupulous" |
| Lending credence | in arguing her point, a writer or speaker should always lend her opponent some credit for the opponent's ideas. In this way, the writer or speaker persuades her audience that she is fair and has done her homework, thereby strengthening her own argument |
| Litotes | a form of understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite. Example: "She was not unmindful" when one means she gave careful attention |
| Logic | the process of reasoning |
| Loose sentence | is grammatically complete at some point before the end; the opposite of a periodic sentence. Most of the complex sentences we use are loose |
| Lyric | brief, musical non-narrative poems that give a speaker's feelings |
| Memoir | a first-person prose selection about an event |
| Metaphor | a direct comparison between 2 dissimilar things (Your eyes are stars) |
| Metonymy | a figure of speech in which a representative term is used for a larger idea (the pen is mightier than the sword) |
| Mock epic | pokes fun at low activities by treating them in the elevated style of the epic |
| Mood | the strong feeling that we get from a literary work (terror, tension, calmness, suspense) |
| Motif | the repetition of variations of an image or idea in a work used to develop theme or characters |
| Narrative | writing that tells a story |
| Narrator | the speaker in a literary work |
| Onomatopoeia | words that sound like the sound they represent (plop, hiss, fuzz, buzz) |
| Oxymoron | an image of contradictory terms (pretty ugly, jumbo shrimp, bittersweet) |
| Pacing | the movement of a literary piece from one point or section to another |
| Parable | a story that operates on more than one level and usually teaches a moral lesson |
| Parallelism | the arrangement of parts of a sentence, sentences, or paragraphs and larger units of composition so that one element of equal importance with another is similarly developed and phrased. "He likes to fish and to swim." |
| Parody | a comic imitation of a work that ridicules the original. It can mock or be gently humorous |
| Paradox | a statement which on its face seems to be self-contradictory or absurd, yet turns out to have valid meaning. "Death, thou shalt die!" |
| Pastoral | any writing concerning itself with shepherds, often set in Arcadia, in which rural life is seen as superior to city life |
| Pathetic fallacy | a specific kind of personification in which inanimate objects are given human emotions. "The cruel crawling foam" |
| Pathos | the aspects of a literary work that elicit pity from the audience, an appeal to emotion that can be used to persuade |
| Pedantic | a term used to describe writing that borders on lecturing. it is scholarly, academic, and often difficult |
| Periodic sentence | presents its main clause at the very end of the sentence for emphasis and sentence variety - this tends to be very formal and oratorical in style and is often meant to emphasize the idea |
| Personification | the assigning of human qualities to inanimate objects or concepts |
| Persuasion | a type of argument that tries to move an audience to thought or action |
| Plot | a sequence of events in a work |
| Point-of-view | the method of narration |
| Portmanteau word | a word coined by fusing together two or more words to hold multiple meanings |
| Polysyndeton | the repetition of conjunctions in close succession for rhetorical effect. "Here and there and everywhere" |
| Process analysis | a method of clarifying the nature of something by explaining how it works in separate, easy-to-understand steps |
| Prose | all work that is not poetry, drama, or song |
| Pun | a play on words that often has a comic effect, associated with wit or cleverness |
| Reductio ad Absurdum | the Latin for "to reduce to the absurd", it can produce a comic effect or be used as an argumentative technique. It is considered a rhetorical fallacy because it reduces an argument to an either/or choice |
| Repetition | using the same sound, word, or phrase. Line or grammatical structure repeatedly to link related ideas and emphasize key points |
| Rhetoric | refers to the entire process of written communication, all the tools a writer uses to present effectively to an audience |
| Rhetorical question | one that does not expect an elicit answer, it is used to pose an idea to be considered by the audience |
| Rhetorical strategies | For AP test purposes, there are two meanings: If the prompt directs the student to mention rhetorical strategies AND literary devices AND imagery in analyzing a piece, then the term means compare/contrast, process analysis, definition, narration, cause/effect, or argument/persuasion. IF the prompt asks students to discuss the rhetorical strategies in a piece and does NOT mention other terms, the student should include everything that he knows about analysis: literary devices, imagery, compare/contrast, etc. |
| Sarcasm | a comic technique that ridicules through caustic language. Tone and attitude may both be described as sarcastic if the writer uses language to mock or scorn |
| Satire | a mode of writing based on ridicule, that criticizes the foibles and follies of society without necessarily offering a solution (Gulliver's Travels exposes mankind's condition) |
| Setting | time and place of a work |
| Simile | an indirect comparison that uses the words like or as to link the differing terms |
| Simple sentence | a complete sentence that has only one main clause |
| Structure | the organization and form of a work |
| Style | the unique way an author presents his ideas - how a writer says what he says. It includes words used, their placement, and distinctive features of tone, imagery, figurative language, sound, and rhythm |
| Syllogism | the format of a formal argument that consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion (all blondes are dumb, Megan is a blonde, Megan is dumb) |
| Symbol | something in a literary work that stands for something else (sun=truth, mockingbird=innocence) |
| Synecdoche | a figure of speech that utilizes a part as representative of the whole (all hands on deck) |
| Synesthesia | the experience of two or more modes of sensation when only one sense is being stimulated - in literature the term is applied to descriptions of one kind of sensation in terms of another. For example, color is attributed to sounds, odor to colors, etc. Keats describes a drink of wine as "tasting of Flora and the country green, /Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth" |
| Syntax | the grammatical structure of prose and poetry |
| Theme | the underlying ideas the author illustrates through characterization, motifs, language, plots, etc. |
| Thesis | the main idea of a piece of writing |
| Tone | the author's attitude toward his subject - tone can be angry, sad, bitter, etc. depending upon the word choice, sentence structure, and purpose for the piece |
| Transition | a word or phrase that links one idea to the next and carries the reader from sentence to sentence, paragraph, to paragraph |
| Understatement | the opposite of exaggeration. It is a technique for developing irony and/or humor where one writes or says less that intended (Swift wrote "Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worst") |
| Voice | can refer to two different areas of writing. One refers to the relationship between a sentence's subject and verb (voice of the verb - active or passive); the other refers to the total "sound" of a writer's style (his unique attitude toward the material) |
Combine with other sets
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