Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Rhetorical Vocabulary -- updated through 9/27


131. slapstick – (literally a device made of two pieces of wood fastened at one end so as to make a loud noise when used by an actor to strike another actor) farce or horseplay for comic effect 127. understatement – expression with an intentional lack of emphasis
128. hyperbole – extreme exaggeration, to the point of absurdity
129. caricature – exaggeration of specific features for comic or grotesque effect130. buffoonery – coarse, loutish behavior; material dealing with gross, uneducated, and unrefined people
132. wit – verbal virtuosity that shows swift perception of the relationship between seemingly incongruous things 133. mood – the emotion evoked by a piece of literature (internal) 134. atmosphere – the setting or stage 135. image – a simile, metaphor, analogy, or any kind of symbol
136. rhetoric – the art of effective expression
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1. antagonist - The character who opposes the interests of the protagonist.

Ex: In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien creates Lord Sauron as the antagonist to Frodo
7. apostrophe - The direct address of an absent person or personified object as if he/she/it is able to reply.
11. asyndeton - The omission of conjunctions between related clauses.
28. parallelism - A set of similarly structured words, phrases, or clauses that appears in a sentence or paragraph.

Ex 1: The dog ran, stumbled, and fell.
Ex 2: "After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day…" (Fitzgerald 17).
Ex: "This is the villain among you who deceived you, who cheated you, who meant to betray you completely." (Aristotle)
Ex: "O' Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?" (William Shakespeare)
31. periodic sentence - A sentence with modifying elements included before the verb and/or complement.
Ex: "John, the tough one, the sullen kid who scoffed at any show of sentiment, gave his mother flowers."
34. agency - In a dramatistic pentad created by a speaker or writer in order to invent material, the words the speaker or writer uses to describe the means by which something happened or happens in a particular situation.
Ex: "As a general rule, any object capable of breaking down at the moment when it is most needed will do so.  The automobile is typical of the category." (Russell Baker)
36. anecdote - A brief narrative offered in a text to capture the audience's attention or to support a generalization of claim.
Ex: "A good man, gray on the edges, an assistant manager in a brown starched and ironed uniform, is washing the glass windows of the store...Good night, m'ijo! he tells a young boy coming out after playing the video game..." (Dagoberto Gilb)
==//==4. antimetabole - The repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order.
Ex: One should eat to live, not live to eat.
  1. appeal to authority - In a text, the reference to words, action, or beliefs of a person in authority as a means of supporting a claim, generalization, or conclusion.
Ex: Isaac Newton was a genius and he believed in God. Therefore, God must exist.
  1. appeal to emotion - The appeal of a text to the feelings or interests of the audience.
Ex: If you don't graduate from high school, you will always be poor.
  1. ellipsis - The omission of words, the meaning of which is provided by the overall context of a passage.
Ex: "Medical thinking . . . stressed air as the communicator of disease, ignoring sanitation or visible carriers" (Tuchman).
  1. irony - Writing or speaking that implies the contrary of what is actually written or spoken.
Ex 1: "Of course I believe you," Joe said sarcastically.
Ex 2: "I can't describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her…I even hoped for a while that she'd throw me over" (Fitzgerald 157).
  1. anadiplosis - The repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause.
Ex: "Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state; servants of fame; and servants of business." (Francis Bacon)
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  1. antanaclasis - Repetition of a word in two different senses.
Ex: If we do not hang together, we will hang separately.
  1. zeugma - A trope in which one word, usually a noun or the main verb, governs two other words not related in meaning.
Ex: He governs his will and his kingdom.
  1. tone – the type of voice (manifested in word choice) which an author uses to express his attitude and should be expressed by an adjective.
  2. attitude – the author’s opinion of or on his subject or audience
  3. denotation – dictionary definition
  4. connotation – the associations of a word
  5. metaphor – a direct comparison of two unlike things without using ‘like’ or ‘as’
  6. analogy – a comparison of relationships (usually consisting of two pairs of components)
  7. anaphora – a phrase repeated for effect in literature
  8. satire – the literary art of diminishing a subject by making it ridiculous and exposing what is wrong or hypocritical about it
  9. irony – the expression of the opposite of that which is intended
  10. sarcasm – an extreme form of irony, intended to cut or wound
This list is cumulative -- once responsible for a word, you will be responsible for the whole semester.

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