Rhetorical Devices Flashcards
Diction
- word choice
- can help reader determine character and setting
Syntax
- sentence and phrase structure
- can help the reader determine character and setting
Antithesis
- in which two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect
- the balancing of contrasting ideas
- example: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
Polysyndeton
- stringing out a sentence with conjunctions
- example: “Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly–mostly–let them have their whiteness.” (Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings)
- effect is to bring rhythm to the text and to emphasize what is being said
Anacoluthon
-breaking off of a sentence…
-example: “I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall–I will do such things,
What they are, yet I know not…..”(King Lear by William Shakespeare)
-shows the confusion of King Lear at this time in that he doesn’t quite know what kind of revenge he will enact
Parallelism
- the repetition of similar syntactical structure
- example: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”
- effect is to create a balanced pool of ideas
First Person Point of View
- involves the use of the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’
- narrator is a person in the story telling their point of view
Second Person Point of View
-in which the narrator addresses the audience directly using the pronoun ‘you’
Omniscient Third Person Point of View
-when the narrator can enter the consciousness of any character and evaluate their motives and feelings
Third Person Limited
-which means that the narrator describes events only from the perspective and understanding of one, or sometimes a select few characters
Apostrophe
- when a speaker addresses something that will not reply, sometimes nature, or God
- example: “Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me;”
- effect is to bring in abstract emotions that will then bring the reader in
Analogy
-an extended comparison of similar things
-example: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,”
-used to link an unfamiliar idea with something familiar
Colloquiallism
- informal diction; diction particular to a region
- example: How Huck Finn talks
- shows that Huck is uneducated and what area he has grown up in
