rhetorical terms ap lit
Terms
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- A short, informal reference to a famous person, event, or piece of literature
- allusion
- You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth first. 'Tis a word too great for any mouth of this age's size. -Shakespeare
- allusion
- Opposition, or contrast, of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction
- antithesis
- Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. -Barry Goldwater
- antithesis
- A sudden turn from the general audience to address a specific group or person or personified abstraction, absent or present
- apostrophe
- O books who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of you and enfranchise all who serve you faithfully! - Richard de Bury
- apostrophe
- Harsh joining of sounds
- cacophony
- We want no parlay with you and your grisly gang who work your wicked will. -W. Churchill
- cacophony
- Slang (usually regional)
- colloquial
- Y’all
- colloquial
- Tangible details
- concrete detail
- The decaying house was yellow.
- concrete detail
- Suggested meaning of a word
- connotation
- Home
- connotation
- Dictionary definition of the word
- denotation
- House
- denotation
- Choice of words
- diction
- In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.- The Scarlet Letter(This _____ is flo
- diction
- Pleasant joining of sounds
- euphony
- O star (the fairest one in sight)
- euphony
- Language understood outside of its literal meaning
- figurative language
-
· She was a whale.
· He song was like the sun on a cool summer’s day. - figurative language
- A reference to an event which took place prior to the beginning of a story or play.
- flashback
- The door opens slowly, and I can discern two glowing eyes against the darkness.It was a dark and stormy night. The rain slashed against the windows and panged against the roof. I heard a scratching on the wall. I drew closer. Then I saw it.
- flashback
- Story inside a story
- framed story
- Johnny crawled timidly into his father’s lap. The burly man didn’t look down at him; instead, he began whispering, as if to thin air: “Bill took us out to the corn field that day. He told us that he had found deer tracks. When we got there and saw
- framed story
- Exaggeration for emphasis or for rhetorical effect
- hyperbole
- I said "rare," not "raw." I've seen cows hurt worse than this get up and get well.
- hyperbole
- Descriptions that appeal to the senses.
- imagery
- When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table.-"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot
- imagery
- Expression of something which is contrary to the intended meaning; the words say one thing but mean another
- irony
- Romeo poisons himself because he believes Juliet is dead, but the audience knows that she is merely in an induced sleep. -Romeo and Juliet
- irony
- 3 kinds of irony and definitions
-
verbal irony- someone says something, but means something completely different
situational irony- what is expected to happen is the opposite of what occurs
dramatic irony- the reader or audience knows something that the character does not - Implied comparison achieved through a figurative use of words; the word is used not in its literal sense, but in one analogous to it
- metaphor
- Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.-Shakespeare, Macbeth
- metaphor
- Reference to something with a name disproportionately lesser than its nature (a kind of litotes)
- meiosis
- Said of an amputated leg: "It's just a flesh wound" —Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- meiosis
- Present when rhythm is regular
- meter
- Iamb:Whose (u) woods (/) | these (u) are (/) | I (u) think (/) | I (u) know (/).
- meter
- Substitution of one word for another which it suggests
- metonymy
-
· He is a man of the cloth
· The pen is mightier than the sword - metonymy
- One syllable in length
- monosyllabic
- Dog
- monosyllabic
- The speaker or character who tells a story.
- narration
- “I met Dennis in the first grade. I’ll never forget the day he stood up for me: From that moment on we were fast friends.†(____ by a friend of Dennis)
- narration
- Occurs when a narrator knows everything about the characters and their situations, including their thoughts.
- omniscient
- “Although his exterior displayed something akin to sorrow, he fairly skipped with glee to be rid of his in-laws.â€
- omniscient
- Apparent paradox achieved by the juxtaposition of words which seem to contradict one another
- oxymoron
- I must be cruel only to be kind. -Shakespeare, Hamlet
- oxymoron
- An assertion seemingly opposed to common sense, but that may yet have some truth in it
- paradox
- What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young. -George Bernard Shaw
- paradox
- Attribution of personality to an impersonal thing
- personification
-
· England expects every man to do his duty. -Lord Nelson
· The ship began to creak and protest as it struggled against the rising sea. - personification
- The viewpoint from which a story is told.
- point of view
- “I didn’t do anything!! You always blame me for everything that happens around here!!â€(____: The older sister)
- point of view
- More than one syllable in length
- polysyllabic
- Centipede
- polysyllabic
- A play on words that sound similar or exactly the same
- pun
-
· Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.-Romeo and Juliet
· When gambling became legal in the city, everyone agreed that the city was now a bettor place.
· Did you hear about the Frenchman who jumped off the Eiffel Tower wear - pun
- Usually defined as any question asked for a purpose other than to obtain the information the question requests; used for effect, emphasis, or provocation, or for drawing a conclusionary statement from the facts at hand
- rhetorical question
-
· "Why me, God?!"
· "Why are you so stupid?"
· For if we lose the ability to perceive our faults, what is the good of living on? -Marcus Aurelius - rhetorical question
- The similarity in sound of the ends of words: the last stressed syllable and the following unstressed syllables (if any)
- rhyme
-
'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing, or in judging ill;
But of the two, much greater is th' offence
To tire the patience, than mislead the sense-Pope - rhyme
- Use of mockery, verbal taunts, or bitter irony
- sarcasm
- ". . . these days, arena names make little sense. For instance, not only does the National Car Rental Center, home of the Florida Panthers, promise little in the way of aesthetics, you can't even rent a car there. Same with the horseless Saddledome
- sarcasm
- An explicit comparison between two things using 'like' or 'as'
- simile
- My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease,-Shakespeare, Sonnet CXLVII
- simile
- Tries to capture a character's (or the writer's) internal thought processes
- stream of consciousness
- The mailman is here again. I despise the mailman. He always carries that ridiculous red pouch full to bursting with letters and papers and magazines and whatnot. I never get any letters. I wonder if he can see me… No, he can’t.
- stream of consciousness
- What is distinguished and what is distinguishing in writing. (Characteristic of the individual writer)
- style
- She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where
- style
- style is characterized by
- diction, sentence structure, treatment of subject matter, and figurative language
- Understanding one thing with another; the use of a part for the whole, or the whole for the part. (A form of metonymy.)
- synecdoche
- The U.S. won three gold medals. (Instead of, The members of the U.S. boxing team won three gold medals.)
- synecdoche
- How a sentence is put together (Sentence structure, word order, phrasing, parallelism)
- syntax
- Strong, you are. Much fear, I sense in you. (Anastrophe)
- syntax
- A sentence shorter than 5 words in length
- telegraphic
- The milk was warm. The sheets were clean. Francisco was the murderer.
- telegraphic
- Writer or speaker’s attitude towards the subject
- tone
- “The wretched fellow had stolen money from innocent citizens, destroyed public property, and above all, behaved in an utterly offensive manner to all who beheld him.And yet, in no more than an instant, he had saved the town.â€(The new paragraph marks
- tone