You will be responsible for all terms starting this Tuesday.
Czeuzie -- remind me to tell the irony story before I get distracted by teaching class or something.
Rhetorical Terms - Argument
- 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.
- antanaclasis - Repetition of a word in two different senses.
Ex: If we do not hang together, we will hang separately.
- anticipated objection - The technique a writer or speaker uses in an argumentative text to address and answer objections, even though the audience has not had the opportunity to voice these objections.
Ex: "You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air…You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory." (Winston Churchill)
- antimetabole - The repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order.
Ex: One should eat to live, not live to eat.
- apologist - A person or character who makes a case for some controversial, even contentious, position.
Ex: In Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, Romeo makes a case for marrying Juliet, despite the controversy over the issue.
- apology - An elaborate statement justifying some controversial, even contentious, position.
- apostrophe - The direct address of an absent person or personified object as if he/she/it is able to reply.
Ex: "O' Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?" (William Shakespeare)
- 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.
- 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.
- argument by analysis - An argument developed by breaking the subject matter into its component parts.
Ex: The Virginians failed miserably at initial colonization and suffered through disease, war, and famine because of their high expectations and greed, which also molded their colony socially and economically.
- asyndeton - The omission of conjunctions between related clauses.
Ex: "This is the villain among you who deceived you, who cheated you, who meant to betray you completely." (Aristotle)
- basic topic - One of the four perspectives that Aristotle explained could be used to generate material about any subject matter: greater or less, possible and impossible, past fact, and future fact.
Ex: Topics include justice, peace, rights, and movie theaters.
- cloze test - A test of reading ability that requires a person to fill in missing words in a text.
- common topic - One of the perspectives, derived from Aristotle's topics, used to generate material. The six common topics are definition, division, comparison, relation, circumstances, and testimony.
Ex: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson's political opinions can be the subject of a common topic, such as division.
- confirmation - In ancient Roman oratory, the part of a speech in which the speaker or writer could offer proof or demonstration of the central idea.
Ex: In Julius Caesar's speech, the confirmation was scattered throughout.
- connotation - The implied meaning of a word, in contrast to its directly expressed "dictionary meaning."
Ex: Home literally means one's house, but implies feelings of family and security.
- effect - The emotional or psychological impact a text has on a reader or listener.
Ex: The Grapes Of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, causes the reader to have sympathy for migrant workers.
- 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).
- epanalepsis - Repetition at the end of a clause of the word that occurred at the beginning of the clause.
Ex: Blood hath brought blood.
- epithet - A word of phrase adding a characteristic to a person's name.
Ex: Alexander the Great.
- figurative language - Language dominated by the use of schemes and tropes.
Ex: "The ground is thirsty and hungry."
- generalization - A point that a speaker or writer generations on the basis of considering a number of particular examples.
Ex: "All French people are rude."
- genre - A piece of writing classified by type.
- 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).
- narration - In ancient Roman oratory, the part of a speech in which the speaker provided background information on the topic.
Ex: Julius Caesar used narration in many of his speeches.
- pace - The speed with which a plot moves from one event to another.
Example: In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck paces the story somewhat slowly, interspersing it with main-idea chapters.
- 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).
- parenthesis - An insertion of material that interrupts the typical flow of a sentence.
Ex: The dog (which was black) ran, stumbled, and fell.
- common topics - The English translation of konnoi topoi, the four topics that Aristotle explained could be used to generate material about any subject matter; also called basic topics.
Ex: Topics include justice, peace, rights, and movie theaters.
- 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."
- scheme - An artful variation from typical formation and arrangement of words or sentences.
Ex: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Rhetorical Terms - Diction
- act - what happened or happens in a particular situation.
Ex: "With the cunning typical of its breed, the automobile never breaks down while entering a filling station with a large staff of idle mechanics. It waits…" (Russell Baker)
- agency - 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)
- agent - the person or persons involved in taking action in a particular situation.
Ex: "Thus [the automobile] creates maximum misery, inconvenience, frustration, and irritability among its human cargo, thereby reducing its owner's life span." (Russell Baker)
- 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)
- contraction - The combination of two words into one by eliminating one or more sounds and indicating the omission with an apostrophe.
Ex: "Do not" becomes "don't." "Should have" becomes "should've."
- contraries - See contradiction.
Ex: The book is red. The book is not green. If the book is read, then the book is not green. If the book is not red, then the book may be green.
- data (as evidence) - Facts, statistics, and examples that a speaker or writer offers in support of a claim, generalization, or conclusion.
Ex: Conserve electricity. 42% of America's carbon dioxide emissions come from electricity generation.
- deductive reasoning - Reasoning that begins with a general principle and concludes with a specific instance that demonstrates the general principle.
Ex: "Gravity makes things fall. The apple that hit my head was due to gravity."
- delivery - The presentation and format of a composition.
Ex: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, is formatted by chapters, which either present general information about farmers or the specific story of Joe and his family.
- editing - The final observation, before delivery, by a writer or speaker of a composition to evaluate appropriateness and to locate missteps in the work.
Ex: For process papers, I edit my work many times before submitting a final draft.
- efferent reading - Reading to garner information from a text.
Ex: For history, I perform efferent reading of the textbook.
- enthymeme - Logical reasoning with one premise left unstated.
Ex: We cannot trust this man, for he has perjured himself in the past. (Missing: Those who perjure themselves cannot be trusted.)
- euphemism - An indirect expression of unpleasant information in such way as to lesson its impact.
Ex 1: "Passed way" for "died."
Ex 2: "You see, I carry on a little business on the side, a sort of a sideline, you understand"(Fitzgerald 87).
- inference - A conclusion that a reader or listener reaches by means of his or her own thinking rather than by being told directly by a text.
- narrative intrusion - A comment that is made directly to the reader by breaking into the forward plot movement.
Ex: Narrator: The dog ran very fast across the street, dodging two cars.
- point of view - The perspective or source of a piece of writing. A first-person point of view has a narrator or speaker who refers to himself or herself as "I." A third-person point of view lacks "I" in perspective.
Ex: The Great Gatsby is written in first-person point of view.
- ratio - Combination of two or more elements in a dramatistic pentad in order to invent material.
- reading - The construction of meaning, purpose, and effect in a text.
- rhetorical choices (style) - The particular choices a writer or speaker makes to achieve meaning, purpose, or effect.
- stock settings - Stereotypical time and place settings that let readers know a text's genre immediately.
Ex: For science fiction, if the text takes place in the future, on another planet, or in another universe.
Rhetorical Terms - Scheme
- alliteration - The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning or in the middle of two or more adjacent words.
Ex: "To make a man to meet the moral need/ A man to match the mountains and the sea" (Edwin Markham)
- 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)
- anaphora - The repetition of a group of words at the beginning of successive clauses.
Ex: "We shall not flag or fail. 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…" (Winston Churchill)
- antecedent-consequence relationship - The relationship expressed by "if…then" reasoning.
Ex: If industries poison rivers with pollutants, then many fish will die.
- anthimeria - The substitution of one part of speech for another.
Ex: "The thunder would not peace at my bidding." (William Shakespeare)
- appeal - One of three strategies for persuading audiences--logos, appeal to reason; pathos, appeal to emotion; and ethos, appeal to ethics.
Ex: "I elicited the anger of some of the most aggressive teenagers in my high school. A couple of nights later, a car pulled up in front of my house, and the angry teenagers in the car dumped garbage on the lawn of my house as an act of revenge and intimidation." (James Garbarino)
- appositive - A noun or noun phrase that follows another noun immediately or defines or amplifies its meaning.
Ex: Orion, my orange cat, is sitting on the couch.
- argument - A carefully constructed, well-supported representation of how a writer sees an issue, problem, or subject.
Ex: The Patriots prevailed over the Loyalists, who they violently persecuted due to their conflicting position; both betrayed the African slaves to temporarily bolster their military.
- Aristotelian triangle - A diagram showing the relations of writer or speaker, audience (reader or listener), and text in a rhetorical situation.
- canon - One of the traditional elements of rhetorical composition -- invention, arrangement, style, memory, or delivery.
- casuistry - A mental exercise to discover possibilities for analysis of communication.
- dramatic narration - A narrative in which the reader or viewer does not have access to the unspoken thoughts of any character.
- dynamic character - One who changes during the course of the narrative.
Ex: Romeo is a dramatic character in Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare.
- evidence - The facts, statistics, anecdotes, and examples that a speaker or writer offers in support of a claim, generalization, or conclusion.
Ex: "Recent studies in the brain chemistry of rats show that when they play, their brains release large amounts of dopamine . . ." (Rifkin).
- metonymy - An entity referred to by one of its attributes or associations.
Ex: "The press" for the news media.
- symbol - In a text, an element that stands for more than itself and, therefore, helps to convey a theme of the text.
Ex: Purple symbolizes royalty.
- tautology - A group of words that merely repeats the meaning already conveyed.
Ex: "If you don't get any better, then you'll never improve."
- thesis - The main idea in a text, often the main generalization, conclusion, or claim.
Ex: The corruption of America's rich in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
- thesis statement - A single sentence that states a text's thesis, usually somewhere near the beginning.
- topic - A place where writers go to discover methods for proof and strategies for presentation of ideas.
Ex: Gun control laws, the environment, or communism.
- trope - An artful variation from expected modes of expression of thoughts and ideas.
Ex: Pun or metonymy.
- voice - The textual features, such as diction and sentence structure, that convey a writer's or speaker's persona.
Rhetorical Terms - Syntax
- audience - The person or persons who listen to a spoken text or read a written one and are capable of responding to it.
- chiasmus - Inverted relationship between two elements in two parallel phrases.
Ex: "To stop too fearful and too faint to go."
- claim - The ultimate conclusion, generalization, or point that a syllogism or enthymeme expresses. The point, backed up by support, of an argument.
Ex: In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck's claim was that the poor are wrongly mistreated.
- climax - The arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in order of increasing number or importance.
Ex: "He risked truth, he risked honor, he risked fame, he risked all that men hold dear,—yea, he risked life itself..."
- climbing the ladder - A term referring to the scheme of climax.
Ex: See climax.
- isocolon - Parallel elements that are similar in structure and in length.
Ex: "… to impress the ignorant, to perplex the dubious, and to confound the scrupulous …"
- mnemonic device - A systematic aid to memory.
Ex: "Roy G. Biv" for the most common colors.
- onomatopoeia - A literary device in which the sound of a word is related to its meaning.
Ex: Words like "bang," and "click".
- scene - where and when something happened or happens in a particular situation.
Ex: "My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations" (Fitzgerald 2).
- simple sentence - A sentence with one independent clause and no dependent clause.
Ex: The dog ran.
- situation - The convergence in a situation of exigency (the need to write), audience, and purpose.
Ex: Before drafting my research paper, I had to analyze my purpose and how much background information to provide for my audience.
Rhetorical Terms - Trope
- allegory - An extended metaphoric scheme
Ex 1: "During the time I have voyaged on this ship, I have avoided the cabin; rather, I have remained on deck, battered by wind and rain, but able to see moonlight…"
Ex 2: "This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take forms of houses and...of men..." (Fitzgerald 27).
- allusion - A reference in a written or spoken text to another text or to some particular body of knowledge.
Ex 1: "I doubt if Phaethon feared more -- that time/ he dropped the sun-reins of his father's chariot/ and burned the streak of sky we see today" (Dante's Inferno).
Ex 2: "Have you read 'The rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?" (Fitzgerald 17).
- anastrophe - Inversion or reversal of the usual order of words.
Ex: Echoed the hills.
- anthimeria - The substitution of one part of speech for another.
Ex: The thunder would not peace at my bidding.
- antithesis - The juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas, often in parallel structure.
Ex 1: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." (Barry Goldwater)
Ex 2: "…found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress--and as drunk as a monkey" (Fitzgerald 81).
- flat character - A figure readily identifiable by memorable traits but not fully developed.
Ex: Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.
- format - The structural elements that constitute the presentation of a written text.
Ex: The Modern Language Association (MLA) has created a format for research papers.
- freewriting - Intuitive writing strategy for generation of ideas by writing without stopping.
- functional part - A part of a text classified according to its function.
Ex: The introduction.
- hyperbole - An exaggeration for effect.
Ex 1: "I told you a billion times not to exaggerate."
Ex 2: "…we scattered light through half Astoria…" (Fitzgerald 72).
- invention - The art of generating material for a text; the first of the five traditional canons of rhetoric.
- loose (paratactic) sentence - A sentence that adds modifying elements after the subject, verb, and complement.
Ex: "Bells rang, filling the air with their clangor, startling pigeons into flight from every belfry, bringing people into the streets to hear the news."
- meiosis - Representation of a thing as less than it really is to compel greater esteem for it.
Arson? What a prankster!
- metaphor - An implied comparison that does not use the word like or as.
Ex: "No man is an island" (Donne).
- oxymoron - Juxtaposed words with seemingly contradictory meanings.
Ex: "O miserable abundance! O beggarly riches!" (Donne).
- paralipsis - Irony in which one proposes to pass over a matter, but subtly reveals it.
Ex: "She is talented, not to mention rich."
- peroration - In ancient Roman oratory, the part of a speech in which the speaker would draw together the entire argument and include material designed to compel the audience to think or act in a way consonant with the central argument.
Ex: In Julius Caesar's speech, the peroration came at the end.
- protagonist - The major character in a piece of literature; the figure in the narrative whose interests the reader is most concerned about and sympathetic toward.
Ex: Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath.
- repertoire - A set of assumptions, skills, facts, and experience that a reader brings to a text to make meaning.
- setting - The context--including time and place--of a narrative.
Ex: The area surround New York City in the 1920s is the setting of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
- simile - A type of comparison that uses the word like or as.
Ex: "There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away" (Fitzgerald 2).
- syllogism - Logical reasoning from inarguable premises.
Ex: All mortals die. All humans are mortal. All humans die.
- synecdoche - A part of something used to refer to the whole.
Ex: "The hired hands are not doing their jobs."
- syntax - The order of words in a sentence.
Ex: "The dog ran" not "The ran dog."
- theme - The message conveyed by a literary work.
Ex: The decline of the American dream in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
112. understatement - Deliberate playing down of a situation in order to make a point.
112. understatement - Deliberate playing down of a situation in order to make a point.
Ex: "I think there's a problem between Shias and Sunnis."
- unity - The sense that a text is, appropriately, about only one subject and achieves one major purpose or effect.
Ex: Pride by Dagoberto Gilb
- unreliable narrator - An untrustworthy or naïve commentator on events and characters in a story.
Ex: Holden Caulfield in Salinger's Catcher in the Rye
- verisimilitude - The quality of a text that reflects the truth of actual experience.
Ex: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon has medium verisimilitude.
- 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.
- tone – the type of voice (manifested in word choice) which an author uses to express his attitude and should be expressed by an adjective.
- attitude – the author’s opinion of or on his subject or audience
- denotation – dictionary definition
- connotation – the associations of a word
- metaphor – a direct comparison of two unlike things without using ‘like’ or ‘as’
- analogy – a comparison of relationships (usually consisting of two pairs of components)
- anaphora – a phrase repeated for effect in literature
- satire – the literary art of diminishing a subject by making it ridiculous and exposing what is wrong or hypocritical about it
- irony – the expression of the opposite of that which is intended
- sarcasm – an extreme form of irony, intended to cut or wound
- understatement – expression with an intentional lack of emphasis
- hyperbole – extreme exaggeration, to the point of absurdity
- caricature – exaggeration of specific features for comic or grotesque effect
- buffoonery – coarse, loutish behavior; material dealing with gross, uneducated, and unrefined people
- 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
- wit – verbal virtuosity that shows swift perception of the relationship between seemingly incongruous things
- mood – the emotion evoked by a piece of literature (internal)
- atmosphere – the setting or stage
- image – a simile, metaphor, analogy, or any kind of symbol
- rhetoric – the art of effective expression
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