Language and Structural Devices Flashcards
Includes poetic and literary
What is alliteration?
Repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of words in close proximity to each other (plosive for p, fricative for f)
What is ambiguity?
When something has two or more possible meanings
What is assonance?
Repetition of the same vowel sound
What is anaphora?
Repetition of the first word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or stanzas
What is anastrophe?
Where the normal word order of a phrase is reversed
What is anadiplosis?
The repetition of the word from the end of one sentence to the start of the next, e.g. ‘Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering’
What is anthropomorphism
Attributing human characteristics to an inanimate object
What is antithesis?
When opposites are placed next to each other for effect, e.g. ‘merry and tragical’
What is bathos?
The descent of a serious tone to a commonplace and maybe funny tone in a story
What is a caesura?
A deliberate pause within a line of poetry, e.g ‘To err is human; to forgive, divine’
What is a cataphoric reference?
A pronoun which is mentioned before the noun to which it refers, e.g. ‘Where it began, I do not know’
What is colloquial language?
Ordinary, everyday language
What is a connotation?
Association evoked by a word, e.g. ‘rosy’ suggests warm and healthy
What is consonance?
Repetition of the same consonant sound in the middle or at the end of words that are near each other, e.g. ‘silent to village wells’
What is the difference between direct and indirect (reported) speech?
- Direct is the the reporting of speech by repeating the actual words of a speaker
- Indirect is the talking about past speech where tense and words are changed, e.g. ‘He said that I should come with him’
What’s the difference between declarative, interrogative and imperative sentences?
- Declarative is a statement
- Interrogative is a question
- Imperative is a command
Exclamatory is declarative which portrays strong emotion
What are dynamic verbs?
Verbs which show continued or progressive action done by the subject, e.g. ‘Jack is hitting the road’
What is a dysphemism?
When an unpleasant word is intentionally used
What is ecphonesis?
An emotional or exlamatory phrase, a common example is the letter ‘O’
What is emotive language?
Something that makes you feel a particular emotion
What is end-stopping?
Finishing a line of poetry with the end of a phrase or sentence
What is enjambment?
When a phrase or sentence runs over from one line or stanza to the next
What is a euphemism?
An indirect term for something upsetting or offensive
What is an extended metaphor?
When a metaphor continues across multiple lines/paragraphs, e.g ‘The classroom was a warzone. In a counter-offensive, Jenkins fought his way through a regiment of blotting paper missiles’
What is an eye rhyme?
Words with similar spellings but different sounds, e.g. ‘love’ and ‘move’
What is a feminine ending?
A line of poetry that ends on an unstressed syllable
What are half rhymes?
Words that have a similar, but not identical, end sound, e.g ‘shade’ and ‘said’
What is a homophone?
A word that sounds the same as another but has a different spelling or meaning, e.g ‘poor’ and ‘paw’
What is a hyperbole?
An exaggerated statement that is not meant to be taken literally
What is hypophora?
When a question is asked and then answered immeadiately after, e.g. ‘What is the meaning of life? Money, of course’
What is imagery?
Descriptive language that builds up a particular picture, usually in the form of a simile or metaphor
What is imagery?
Descriptive language that builds up a particular picture, usually in the form of a simile or metaphor
What is an internal rhyme?
When two words rhyme in the same line, e.g ‘It is underneath the coppice and heath’
What is a juxtaposition?
Placing two things next to eachother to highlight the contrast between them
What is lexical choice?
The poets deliberate choice of words
What is a litote?
An understatement - opposite of hyperbole
What is a masculine ending?
A line of poetry which ends on a stressed syllable
What is a metaphor?
Describing one thing as something else, e.g. ‘the fire of thine eyes’
What are monosyllabic words?
Words with only one syllable (obviously)
What is the mood of a poem?
The feel or atmosphere
What is neologism
The creation of a new word in a poem
What is objective correlative?
An external equivalent for an internal state of mind, e.g. when the weather reflects the mood of a character
What is an octave?
The first 8 lines of a Petrarchan sonnet
What is an onomatopoeia?
A word that sounds like the thing it describes, e.g. ‘smashed’ or ‘click’
What is an oxymoron?
A phrase that seems to contradict itself, e.g. ‘sweet poison’
What is pathetic fallacy?
Like personification, the attribution of human qualities or feelings to an inanimate object when those are particularily appropriate to the situation, e.g. ‘The sun smiled down on my wedding day’
What is personification
Describing a non-living thing as if it has human thoughts or feelings or behaves in a human way
What is pleonasm?
Redundant, ineffective repetition in a sentence, e.g. ‘Exact replica’
What is polyptoton?
The reptition of words derived from the same root (e.g. strength and strong)
What is a polysyballic word?
A word with multiple syllables
What is a pun?
A word with a double meaning used for humorous effect
What is a quatrain?
A four-line stanza
What is a refrain?
A line or stanza in a poem which is repeated
What is the ryhme scheme?
The pattern of rhyming words in a poem
What is a rhyming couplet?
A pair of rhyming lines that are next to eachother
What is the rule of three/tricolon?
When three similar words/clauses are used in a lost for effect
What is rhythm?
A pattern of sounds created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables
What is a sestet?
The last six lines of a Petrachan sonnet
What is sibilance?
Alliteration of ‘s’ and ‘sh’ sounds
What is a similie?
A way of describing something by comparing it so something else, usually by the word ‘like’ or ‘as’, e.g ‘When the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized on a table’
What is a slant rhyme?
A rhyme where the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the preceding vowel sounds, e.g ‘sun and noon’
What is a stanza?
A group of lines in a poem. Stanzas can also be called verses
What are stative verbs?
Verbs which express a state rather then an actions, e.g. ‘Jacky dislikes his new job’
What is the structure of a poem?
The order and arrangement of ideas and events in a poem
What is symbolism?
When an object represents ideas more than itself
What is synaesthesia?
Evoking one kind of sensory experience with another, e.g. ‘scarlet pain’ or ‘perfume light’
What is a synecdoche?
The substitution of part of an object for the whole, e.g. ‘all hands on deck’
What is syntax?
The grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence
What is a temporal marker?
Phrases which mark the passage of time, e.g. ‘In 1812’
What is the tone of a poem?
The emotional aspect of the voice of the poem, e.g sarcastic, melancholy, happy
What is a volta?
- The ‘turning point’ in a poem when there is a shift in mood, tone or pace
- Can specifically refer to the turning point between octave and the sestet in a Petrachan sonnet
What is zoomorphism?
Attributing animal characteristics to a human
What is a simple sentence?
A subject which contains a subject and a verb, but nothing else
What is a compound sentence?
A sentence which contains two or more independant clauses joined by a conjuction, e.g. ‘John walked to the store and his mother watched him leave’
What is a complex sentence?
A sentence which contains an independant clause and a dependant clause, e.g. ‘When I left my home and family, I was no more than a boy’
What is a minor sentence?
An incomplete sentence that is not fully formed, e.g ‘Hey!’
