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AP Lang: Rhetorical Risks

Terms in this set (27)

HORATION SATIRE
light and playfully amusing and seeks to correct vice or foolishness with gentle laughter and understanding. (also Horatian)
JUVENALIAN SATIRE
provokes a darker kind of laughter. It is often bitter and shocking and criticizes corruption or incompetence with scorn and outrage.
Burlesque
work that ridicules people, or actions by mimicry and ridiculous exaggeration achieved through a variety of ways intending to cause laughter. For example, style ordinarily dignified may be used for nonsensical matters.
Caricature
An exaggerated parody, "over the top" portrayal of a person's mental, physical, or personality traits in wisecrack form. Can be insulting, complimentary, and political or can be drawn solely for entertainment too.
Diminution
Reduces the size of something in order that it may be made to appear ridiculous or in order to be examined closely and have its faults seen close up. Also known as deflation. To analyze diminution, identify what has been reduced, as well as why it would be reduced (satirical purpose).
Double entendre
a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first (more obvious) meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué or ironic to convey an indelicate meaning.
Farce
exciting laughter through exaggerated, improbable situations. This usually contains low comedy: quarreling, fighting, coarse wit, horseplay, noisy singing, boisterous conduct, trickery, clownishness, drunkenness, slap-stick. Farce is literature that combines exaggeration with an improbable plot and stereotyped characters to achieve humor. Ex. Three Stooges, Frasier, 3rd Rock
Grotesque
creating a tension between laughter and horror or revulsion; the essence of al "sick" humor or black humor. Ex. dead baby jokes
Hyperbole
exaggeration. To enlarge, increase, or represent something beyond normal bounds so that it becomes ridiculous and its faults can be seen.
Incongruity. To present something that is out of place or is absurd in relation to its surroundings. To analyze incongruity, describe the scene, as well as what is out of place, with an explanation for why it is out of place.
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Inflation
A common technique of satire is to take a real-life situation and exaggerate it to such a degree that it becomes ridiculous and its faults can be seen, and thus satirical. To analyze inflation, identify what is being exaggerated, how you know it is exaggerated, and why it is exaggerated (satirical purpose).
Invective
harsh, abusive language directed against a person or cause. Invective is an angry, critical or abusive tirade directed at someone or something.
Dramatic irony
the reader knows something important that a character does not know. Dramatic irony is a relationship of contrast between a character's limited understanding of his or her situation in some particular moment of the unfolding action and what the audience, at the same instant, understands the character's situation actually to be.
Situational irony
what actually happens is the opposite of what is expected or appropriate. Situational irony results from recognizing the oddness or unfairness of a given situation, be it positive or negative. Even though a person typically cannot justifiably explain this unfairness logically, the coincidental nature of the situation is still very obvious to those evaluating it.
Socratic irony
named after Socrates. Presenting a willingness to learn, for the sake of exposing an opponent's errors. Feigned ignorance for a purpose. Socrates pretended ignorance of a subject in order to draw knowledge out of his students by a question and answer device. Socratic irony is feigning ignorance to achieve some advantage over an opponent.
Verbal irony
meaning is different, often opposite, from what it says, a contrast between what is stated and what is meant. Often using sarcasm, overstatement, understatement, and/or litotes.
Juxtaposition
Places things of unequal importance side by side. It brings all the things down to the lowest level of importance on the list.
Malapropism—a deliberate mispronunciation of a name or term with the intent of poking fun. Ex. "Lorraine, my density has brought me to you." George McFly, Back to the Future (destiny). To analyze a malapropism, point to the intentionally incorrect word, as well as identify the real word, the word that should have been used and how it mocks its target.
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Mock Encomium
praise which is only apparent and which suggests blaming instead
Mock Epic
using elevated diction and devices from the epic or the heroic to deal with low or trivial subjects
Parody
To imitate the techniques and/or style of some person, place, or thing. An imitative work created to mock, comment on or trivialize an original work or its subject matter (or some other target). Designed to ridicule in nonsensical fashion an original piece of work.
Sarcasm
use of language to hurt or ridicule; not subtle; a sharply mocking or contemptuous remark. To analyze sarcasm, identify the verbal irony (meaning opposite of what is stated), as well as evidence of "attitude," the words (diction) that indicate the snarky tone, which is the defining feature of sarcasm.
Understatement
Reference to something as exaggeratedly lesser than its true nature; for example, describing a flooded area as "slightly soggy" (Litotes: deliberate understatement)
Wit
humor in order to criticize, verbal cleverness
Word Play
the words that are used become the main subject of the work: puns, phonetic mix-ups, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, telling character names, etc.
Parody
A work that closely imitates the style or content of another with the specific aim of comic effect and/or ridicule.
Satire
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
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