Literary and Rhetorical Terms s1
Literary and Rhetorical Terms
(Adapted from various sources, including APCliff’s and The Language of Composition)
o Abstract language: Language describing intangible ideas and qualities rather than tangible or specific things, people, or places.
· Ex: Superman’s motto of “Truth, justice, and the American Way”
o Ad hominem argument/attack: A personal attack on the character or other traits of one’s opponent rather than an argument against his/her ideas.
· Ex: "Paula says the umpire made the correct call, but this can't be true, because Paula is a stupid idiot."
o Allegory: A representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another.
· Ex: In the Bible, the “Good Samaritan” is an allegory representing the right thinking and compassionate person.
o Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words. Although the term is not used in the multiple choice section of the exam, alliteration may appear in an essay passage. The repetition can reinforce meaning, unify ideas, and/or supply a musical sound. Be sure you state why the author wants such an effect!
· Ex: “She sells seashells by the seashore.”
o Allusion: A direct or indirect reference to something which is presumably commonly known, such as an event, book, myth, place, or work of art. Allusions can be historical, literary, religious, or mythical. There are, of course, many more possibilities, and a work may simultaneously use multiple layers of allusion.
· Ex: “Like the prodigal son, he returned to his home town and was welcomed by all who knew him" is a Biblical allusion to the story of the prodigal son.
o Ambiguity: The multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a word, phrase, sentence, or passage. Ambiguity implies that either meaning could be correct.
· Ex: “After the cat caught the mouse, it died.” Who died, the cat or the mouse?
o Analogy: A comparison of similarities between different things which are otherwise unlike. Often the comparison is used to explain the complex in terms of the simple, or something unfamiliar is associated with something more familiar. The comparison suggests that if the two things are alike in certain respects, they will probably be alike in other ways as well. Analogies can make writing more vivid, imaginative, or intellectually engaging. They may be used effectively to persuade, but logically they prove nothing.
· Ex: A streetlight is like a star. Both provide light at night, both are in predictable locations, both are overhead, and both serve no function in the daytime.
o Anaphora: The repetition of words at the beginning of successive clauses.
· Ex: "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." (Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, June 4, 1940)
o Anecdote: A personal or biographical story told to illustrate a point. Anecdotes are often inserted into fiction or nonfiction as a way of developing a point or injecting humor.
· Ex: The violinist Dave Swarbrick was amused one day to find his obituary printed in the Telegraph. Appraised of the mistake, the paper printed the following retraction: "Mr. Swarbrick, who was reported dead in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, is recovering well."
o Antecedent: The noun to which a later pronoun refers.
· Ex: President Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address in 1863.
o Anticlimax: A sudden drop from the dignified or important in thought or expression to the commonplace or trivial, often for humorous effect.
· Ex: "In moments of crisis . . . I size up the situation in a flash, set my teeth, contract my muscles, take a firm grip on myself and, without a tremor, always do the wrong thing." George Bernard Shaw
o Antimetabole: The repetition of words in an inverted order to sharpen a contrast.
· Ex: “You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance." Ray Bradbury
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” John F. Kennedy
o Antithesis: opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction.
· Ex: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater
Brutus: “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
o Aphorism: A short statement of known authorship which expresses a general truth or a moral principle. If the authorship is known, the statement is generally considered to be a folk proverb. An aphorism can be a memorable summation of an author’s point, or it can be a focusing device at the beginning of an essay.
· Ex: "Sits he on ever so high a throne, a man still sits on his bottom." Montaigne
o Apostrophe: A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person, a personified abstraction, or sometimes an inanimate object. The effect may add emotional intensity or familiarity.
· Ex: Walt Whitman addresses the assassinated Abraham Lincoln as “O Captain! My Captain!”
o Aside: a dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience. By convention the audience understands that the character's speech is not heard by the other characters in the drama. An aside is usually a brief comment, rather than a long speech such as a monologue or soliloquy.
· Ex: From Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “From this moment, the very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand.”
o Assonance: Repetition of a vowel sound within two or more words in close proximity.
· Ex: O fortunatam natam me consule Romam! Cicero, de consulatu
o Asyndeton: Commas used (with no conjunction) to separate a series of words. The parts are emphasized equally when the conjunction is omitted; in addition, asyndeton speeds up the flow of the sentence. Asyndeton takes the form of X, Y, Z as opposed to X, Y, and Z.
· Ex: "They dove, splashed, floated, splashed, swam, snorted." James T. Farrell, Young Lonigan
o Atmosphere: The emotional mood created by the entirety of a 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.
· Ex: Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher establishes an atmosphere of gloom and emotional decay.
o Balanced Sentence: Construction in which both halves of the sentence are about the same length and importance.
· Ex: "The novel concentrates on character; the film intensifies the violence," is a balanced sentence.
o Begging the Question: Often called circular reasoning, begging the question occurs when the believability of the evidence depends on the believability of the claim. In other words, one assumes a statement to be true when it has not been proven to be so.
· Ex: All intentional acts of killing human beings are morally wrong. The death penalty is an intentional act of killing a human being; therefore the death penalty is wrong.
o Bias: Prejudice or predisposition toward one side of a topic or issue.
· Ex: “There is no debate—chocolate ice cream is much better than strawberry ice cream.”
o Bombast: Inflated language; the use of high-sounding language for a trivial subject.
· Ex: “Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free, and let not hemp his windpipe suffocate” can be expressed simply as “Hang dogs but not men.”
o Caricature: A grotesque likeness of striking characteristics in persons or things.
o Chiasmus: A verbal pattern (a type of antithesis) in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first with the parts reversed. Essentially the same as antimetabole.
· Ex: "Don't sweat the petty things--and don't pet the sweaty things."
"I am stuck on Band-Aid, and Band-Aid's stuck on me." (advertising jingle for Band-Aid bandages)
o Chronological Order: Arrangement by the order in which things occur; usually moves from past to present. In reverse chronological order, events are told from present to past.
o Cite: To identify a part of a piece of writing as being derived (paraphrased, summarized, quoted) from another source. To fail to cite constitutes plagiarism.
o Classification: Arrangement of material into groups based on characteristics; e.g., media classified as print, video, or audio, with representative examples of each.
o Clause: A grammatical unit that contains both a subject and a verb. An independent (or main) clause expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence. A dependent (or subordinate) clause cannot stand alone as a sentence and must be accompanied by an independent clause.
· Ex: “Because I practiced hard, my AP scores were high.” The independent clause is “my AP scores were high,” and the dependent clause is “Because I practiced hard.”
o Cliché: A trite expression, often a figure of speech whose effectiveness has been worn out through overuse and excessive familiarity.
· Ex: “What goes around comes around.”
o Colloquial/Colloquialism: The use of slang or informalities in speech or writing. Colloquial expressions in writing include local or regional dialects and usage. Colloquialisms are to be avoided in formal writing.
· Ex: Jack was “bummed out” about his chemistry grade instead of Jack was “upset about” his chemistry grade.
o Conceit: A fairly elaborate figure of speech, especially an extended comparison involving unlikely metaphors, similes, imagery, hyperbole, and oxymora.
· Ex: One of the most famous conceits is John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," a poem in which Donne compares two souls in love to the points on a geometer's compass.
o Connotation: The non-literal, associative meaning of a word; the implied, suggested meaning.
· Ex: A stubborn person may be described as being either strong-willed or pig-headed. Although these have the same literal meaning (i.e. stubborn), strong-willed connotes admiration for the level of someone's will, while pig-headed connotes frustration in dealing with someone.
o Consonance: Repetition of a consonant sound within two or more words in close proximity. Consonance should not be confused with assonance, which is the repetition of vowel sounds. Alliteration is a special case of consonance where the repeated consonant sound is at the beginning of each word, as in "few flocked to the fight."
· Ex: "All mammals named Sam are clammy".
o Contrast: To exhibit differences by comparing something with something else; form of contrast.
o Coordinate Clause: A clause that is a main part of a sentence and is as important as another main part. Coordinate clauses are connected by words such as ‘and’, ‘but’, or ‘or’.
· Ex: “I will go home and he will go to work.”
“John likes hamburgers, but Mary prefers hot dogs.”
o Deductive Reasoning: Deductive reasoning argues from the general to a specific instance. The basic idea is that if something is true of a class of things in general, this truth applies to all legitimate members of that class.
· Ex: Wasps use their stingers to sting, therefore that wasp will sting you.
o Denotation: The literal, strict definition of a word.
· Ex: In the "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost the word wall acts as both a physical boundary (denotation) and emotional barrier
· (connotation) preventing friendly interaction between neighbors.
o Diction: choice of words, especially with regard to correctness, clearness, or effectiveness.
o Didactic: (from the Greek, “teaching”) A term used to describe something intended to teach a specific lesson or moral or provide a model of moral or ethical behavior or thinking.
· Ex: Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism, which offers a range of advice about critics and criticism.
o Digression: A turning aside, a message that departs from the main subject.
o Either/Or Fallacy: Reducing an argument or issue to two polar opposites and ignoring possible alternatives.
· Ex: "You’re either with me or against me".
o Ellipses: In grammar, the omission of a word or words necessary for complete construction but understood in context.
· Ex: “To be or not to be…that is the question.”
o Epigraph: A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work that is suggestive of the theme.
· Ex: The long quotation from Dante's Inferno that prefaces T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is part of a speech by one of the damned in Dante's Hell.
o Episode: an incident, scene, etc., within a narrative, usually fully developed and either integrated within the main story or digressing from it.
· Ex: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
o Epithet: A short, poetic nickname--often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase--attached to the normal name; Using an appropriate adjective (often habitually) to characterize a person or thing.
· Ex: "fleet-footed Achilles," "Cow-eyed Hera," "Grey-eyed Athena," "Odysseus the man-of-many-wiles," “King Alfred the Great,” “Duke Lorenzo the Magnificent,” “Richard the Lionheart”
o Equivocation: The use of the same term in two different senses in an argument.
· Ex: An aspirin will make noisy children go away because noisy children are a headache and aspirin makes headaches go away.
o Eulogy: A formal expression of praise for someone who has recently died.
· Ex: “I'll never forget the last time I seen him. He was all, "Betcha $50 I can wrestle a 'gator." And I was all, "You're on!"
o Euphemism: (From the Greek, “good speech”) A more agreeable or less unpleasant substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept.
· Ex: Saying "Grandfather has gone to a better place" is a euphemism for "Grandfather has died."