Language Features GCSE Flashcards
Personification
To give an inanimate object a human characteristic
“The wind howled”
Alliteration
A sequence of words that have the same beginning sound
“Ignite idiots like Icarus”
Onomatopoeia
A word that captures a sound
“The man shrieked”
Simile
A phrase using ‘like’ or ‘as’ to describe something.
“The night sky was like a coal slab”
Metaphor
Saying one thing is another thing
“The thoughts were needles in her head”
Sibilance
Alliteration, but only with ‘S’
“Soon, and sometime, I’ll see you somewhere”
Rhetorical question
A question with an obvious answer
“Are you thick?”
Colloquial language
Informal language, and may contain slang
“Alright, mate what’s up?”
Hyperbole
An exaggeration of statements, or claims not meant to be taken seriously
“You took forever!”
Imagery
Descriptive language
“The slithering shadows, made of solid smoke, crawled across the floor as the sun set.”
Noun
An object or thing
“The man walked”
Verb
A word for an action
“The child fell”
Adjective
A describing word
“The sharp sword stood in its frame”
Adverb
A word to describe a verb
“The building shook violently”
Repetition
A word or phrase written or said again and again
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Oxymoron
A figure of speech where contradicting terms are used in conjunction
“The deafening silence”
Pronoun
A word that replaces a noun
“Jones stopped crying. He got up and left”
Abstract noun
A noun denoting something that is not concrete
“This love was dangerous”
Proper noun
A noun referring to a single identity, usually beginning with a capital letter.
“Raymond was in London”
Collective noun
A collection of things taken as a whole.
“The smack of jellyfish”
Assonance
Similar sounds between syllables of nearby words, usually the rhyming of two or more stressed vowels from each word.
“Killed, cold, culled”
Dialect
A particular form of language, specific to a region or social group.
“A northern American says, ‘hello’ where a southern American says, ‘HOO WEE DIDDLY DARN DANG HAY THERE BRUTHUR’”
Dissonance
A lack of agreement or harmony between things that stops the flow of a piece of writing, or song.
Pathos
Appeals to the emotions of the audience and elicits feelings already in them.
Rhyme
A repetition of similar sounds in stressed syllables
Rhythm
The measured flow of words and phrases in verse or prose as determined by the relation of long and short words or stressed and unstressed syllables.
Caesura
A pause near the middle of a line
Symbolism
An image or object that signifies an idea, object or relationship.
Semantic field
A group of words linking to a certain idea
“Colour: blue, yellow, paint, light, dark”
Preposition
Where or when something is in relation to something else
“Before, after, on, under”
Article
A word that defines a noun as specific or unspecific
“A, an, the”
Enjambment
The flow of words continuing through lines (in poetry)
