Midterm Vocab Flashcards
study vocabulary terms
Alliteration
Repetition of the same sound beginning several words or syllables in sequence.
Allusion
Brief reference to a person, event, or place (real or fictitious) or to a work of art.
Anaphora
Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, classes, or lines.
Argument
A process of reasoned inquiry. A persuasive discourse resulting in a coherent and considered movement from a claim to a conclusion.
Audience
The listener, viewer, or reader of a text. Most texts are likely to have multiple audiences.
Claim
Also called an assertion or proposition, a claim states the argument’s main idea or position. A claim differs from a topic or subject in that a claim has to be arguable.
Commentary
a written or spoken explanation or interpretation of an event, situation, or piece of work
Defensible Thesis
an opposing argument or alternative view that can reasonably be argued
Diction
A speaker’s choice of words. Analysis of diction looks at these choices and what they add to the speaker’s message.
Ethos
Speakers appeal to ethos to demonstrate that they are credible and trustworthy to speak on a given topic. Ethos is established by who you are and what you say.
Exigence
A problem to be solved, a situation that requires some modifying response from an audience. Usually the signal pushing the speaker to respond.
Hyperbole
Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or to produce a comic or ironic effect; an overstatement to make a point.
Imagery
A description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells or sounds.
Juxtaposition
Placement of two things together to emphasize similarities or differences.
Line of Reasoning
the logical progression of ideas or arguments in a piece of writing or speech
Logical fallacies
Potential vulnerabilities or weaknesses in an argument.
Logos
Speakers appeal to logos, or reason, by offering clear, rational ideas and using specific details, examples, facts, statistics, or expert testimony to back them up.
Metaphor
Figure of speech that compare two things without using like or as.
Occasion
The time and place a speech is given or a piece is written.
OPTIC
Overview, Parts, Text, Interrelationships, Conclusion
Parallelism
Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.
Pathos
Speakers appeal to pathos to emotionally motivate their audience. More specific appeals to pathos might play on the audience’s values, desires, and hopes, on the one hand, or fears and prejudices, on the other.
Personification
Attribution of a lifelike quality to an inanimate object or idea.
Purpose
The goal the speaker wants to achieve.
Rhetoric
The art of finding ways to persuade an audience
Rhetorical question
questions asked not to elicit an answer but to make a point or persuade the audience
SPACECAT
Speaker, Purpose, Audience, Context, Exegince
Choices, Appeals, Tone
Speaker
Person or group who creates the text.
Subject
Topic of a text.
Syntax
The way in which words are arranged to form phrases, clauses, and sentences, as well as to the grammatical relationship among words themselves.
Tone
A speaker’s attitude toward the subject conveyed by the speaker’s stylistic and rhetorical choices.
Understandment
A figure of speech in which something is presented as less important, direct, urgent, good, and so on, than it actually is, often for satiric or comical effect. Opposite of hyperbole.
