Language Techniques Flashcards
Personification
Give an inanimate object a human feeling or characteristic
Eg: ‘The tree danced happily in the breeze’
Alliteration
A few words starting with the same letter
Eg: ‘Strange sound’
Onomatopoeia
The sound that an object makes
Eg: ‘growl’
Simile
A sentence using ‘as’ or ‘like’
Eg: ‘He sprinted like he has never done before’
Metaphor
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object to which it’s not literally applicable
Eg: ‘Your a diamond’
Rhetorical question
A question that you don’t get an answer to
Eg: ‘How many times do I need to tell you’
Imagery
When you can picture it in your mind
Eg: ‘he had a pale face with a dark grey beard’
Sibilance
Producing air from vocal tracts through the use of lips and tongue. Most of the time the ‘s’ sound is sibilant.
Eg: ‘The sausages were sizzling’
Colloquial language
Used in ordinary or familiar conversations. Not formal or litery.
Eg: ‘How you doing, you alright?’
Hyperbole
Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally
Eg: ‘we’ve been working for years’
Noun
A word that refers to a thing, person, animal, place etc.
Eg: ‘The man walked across the road’
Verb
A verb is a doing word
Eg: ‘He swam in the lake’
Adjective
A word that describes the object or how he is doing it
Eg: ‘The man slowly walked to work’
Adverb
A word that describes a verb
Eg: ‘He swam quickly across the lake’
Repition
This is a word that is repeated in a sentence
Eg: ‘let it snow, let it snow, let it snow’
Oxymoron
A figure of speech in which apparently contradicting terms appear in conjunction
Eg: ‘deafening silence’
Pronoun
A word that can function as a noun phrase used by itself.
Eg: ‘He was so tired so he went to bed’
Abstract noun
A noun denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object
Eg: ‘I could see the anger in his face’
Proper noun
A specific name for a particular person, place or thing
Eg: Common noun ‘I ordered a new computer online
Proper noun ‘I ordered the laptop on Amazon
Collective noun
A word or phrase that refers to a group of people or thing as one intity
Eg: ‘11 football players’
Assonance
Resemblance of sound between syllables of nearly words, arising, particularly from the rhyming of 2 or more stressed vowels.
Dialect
A particular form of a language which is peculiar to a specific region or social group
Eg: ‘a northern American might say ‘hello’
Eg: ‘A Southern American might say, “howdy.”
Dialogue
A conversation between 2 or more people as a feature of a book, play or film
Eg: ‘Lisa’ said kyle ‘i need help taking out the trash’
Dissonance
Lack of harmony between people or things
Eg: A baby crying or a person screaming
Enjambment
The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza.
Irony
The expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
Eg: A man stepping out into a hurricane and saying ‘what a nice day’
Pathos
Appeals to the emotions of audience and elicits feelings that already reside in them
Eg: ‘a teenager begging for brand name jeans’
Rhyme
Correspondence of sound between words or the ending of words
Eg: ‘Bell and ball’ ‘dump and damp’
Caesura
A pause near the middle of a line
Eg: ‘it is for you we speak, not ourselves’
Symbolism
Eg: ‘black is used to represent death or evil’
Semantic field
A group of words that belong together - like sheep in a field
Eg: ‘a baby in a cot’
Preposition
Preposition poem is a poem that begins each line with a proposition. Say propositions modified nouns usually to demonstrate relationship such as time and location.
Article
A word used to modify a noun which is a person, place or thing
‘The’
Protagonist
The main character of the play
Climax
The point in the play or scene where the drama reaches the greatest tension.
Declarative
A sentence in the form of a statement
Exclamatory
An exclamatory sentence expresses strong emotion, and it ends with an exclamation mark
Interrogative
An interrogative sentence is usually in the form of a question
Imperative
An imperative sentence usually contains a command
