English Terminology

Question 1

Who is the author?

Answer 1

the real person who creates and manipulates the text

Question 2

What is diction?

Answer 2

the selection of language from avoidable registers and language sets

Question 3

What is discourse time?

Answer 3

the time taken by the narrative in telling

Question 4

What is genre?

Answer 4

• recurrent literary form
• the way texts are grouped or characterised together to similar others
• What it does:
  
  • can be used as a cue to read texts
  • can trigger an interpretative reference
  • constructs expectations by the reader

Question 5

Who is the implied author?

Answer 5

the idea of the author constructed by the reader as they read the text

Question 6

Who is the implied reader?

Answer 6

• the reader who is expected by us to be the actual intended audience
• Wolfgang Iser

Question 7

What is a narrative?

Answer 7

• The representation of a story
• Two main components:
  
  • the story
  • narrative discourse

Question 8

What is narrative discourse?

Answer 8

• the way which a story is told
  
  • The expression rather than context
  • How the narrative is recounted: Eg.
    - syntax/ diction
    - narrative position
    - style/ tone
    - genre

Question 9

Who is the narrator?

Answer 9

• One who tells

- a tool, devised by the implied author, to narrate the story

Question 10

What is plot?

Answer 10

the arrangement and order of events into a story

Question 11

What is a story?

Answer 11

• what is recounted in a narrative

- What happens, to whom, where

Question 12

What is story time?

Answer 12

the time period covered by the events recounted

Question 13

What is syntax?

Answer 13

the ordering of the presentation of constituent story units of the narrative (characters, events, settings)

Question 14

What is a focaliser?

Answer 14

• who sees and perceives/ experiences
• Bal: the relation between the vision and that which is ‘seen’
• Internal focalisation:
  
  • direct correlation from the narrator and the character
  • shown the perspective of any character within the story
• External focalisation:
  
  • narrator looking down or at what is happening
  • separate to the events”

Question 15

What is characterisation?

Answer 15

• techniques used in a narrative to create a character
• Direct:
  
  • when you are directly told about a character
• indirect:
  
  • action, speech, environment”

Question 16

What is metafiction?

Answer 16

• comments on the fictionality and/ or constructedness of the narrative
• the narrative moment when a text refers to, emphasises, takes view on it’s own production or status as fiction”

Question 17

What is metanarrative?

Answer 17

• the grand narrative
• recurring and culturally used plot structure (e.g. the love triangle)
• Also can refer to an overarching pattern that accounts for and finds a place for smaller-scale narratives (life as a journey)

Question 18

What is quotation?

Answer 18

• the dialogue within characters or direct quoting from an outside text that influences the text
• direct and shape the way the text is interpreted or story unfolds

Question 19

What is intertextuality?

Answer 19

• reusing of specific themes, characters or aspects of a hypertext (pretext) into a new textual form or context (hypotext)
• Julia Kristeva
• spectrum of textual borrowing or alliance which challenges preconceived expectations and fills in gaps
• Genette 5 types of ‘transtextuality’
  
  • architextuality (text and genre)”

Question 20

What is an addresse?

Answer 20

close relationship with the reader due to direct

Question 21

What is an analepsis?

Answer 21

• flashback or retrospective

Question 22

What is a prolepsis?

Answer 22

flashforward

Question 23

Who is the narratee?

Answer 23

the entity addressed by the narrator

Question 24

What is a text?

Answer 24

• an embodied narrative

- something that can be interpreted

Question 25

Who is the unreliable narrator?

Answer 25

• a narrator whose views, values, perceptions or norms are different from those of the implied author
• whose credibility has been compromised
• e.g. Poe Tell Tale heart”

Question 26

What is context?

Answer 26

circumstances around the background or setting of a story

Question 27

What is code?

Answer 27

the formal or aesthetic qualities

Question 28

What is aesthetics?

Answer 28

• appreciation or critique of the beautiful

- synthesising ideas around the beautiful”

Question 29

What is athectisicm?

Answer 29

formal set of attitudes or values to do with beauty and specifically beauty beauty in art

Question 30

What is realism?

Answer 30

• narratives that purport to show the world as it really is
• realist text must seem like the real world to get its cultural authority and persuade us as readers that we actually are reading real life

Question 31

What is a crux?

Answer 31

critical point in a narrative where there is insufficiency of cues to create a major disagreement in the intentional interpretation of the narrative