Rhetorical Terms Flashcards
Aphorism
A tersely phrased statement of a truth or opinion
Assonance
The identity or similarity in sound between internal found in neighboring words
Antithesis
The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases
Annotation
A brief explanation, memory, evaluation text for work literature.
Anachronism
A person, seen, event, it failed correspond with the appropriate time for era.
Arguementation
Explanation of a problem by investigating all sides of it, persuasion through reason.
Adage
A saying or proper containing based on experience. “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”
Ad hominem fallacy
Means “to the man”
A fallacy of logic in which a person’s character or motive is attacked instead of that person’s argument
Antecedent
A noun or noun phrase referred to buy a pronoun
Allegory
A story in which the people, places, and things represent general concept or moral qualities
Anaphora
The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or versus
Allusion
A brief reference to a person, place, event, or passage in a work of literature or the Bible assumed to be sufficiently well known to be recognized by the reader.
Example “I am Lazarus, come from the dead.” T.S. Eliot
Analogy
A comparison between two things in which the more complex is explained in terms of the more simple
Anecdote
A short entertaining account of some event frequently personal or biographical
Anticlimax
A sudden drop from the dignified or important in thought or expression to the commonplace or trivial, often for humorous effect
Begging the question
Fallacy of logical argument that as soon as true the very thing that one is trying to prove.
Example: The Bible is the infallible word of God.
The Bible says that God exists.
Therefore God exists
Colloquial expression
Words and phrases used in every day speech but avoided in formal writing
Uncle Scott bombed out in high school, and worked his butt off in college.
Damning with faint praise
Intentional use of a positive statement that has a negative implication
“Your new hairdo is so . . .interesting.”
Deduction
He form of reasoning that begins with a generalize Asian, then applies the generalization to a specific case.
opposite to induction.
Digression
A temporary departure from the main subject in speaking or writing
Euphemism
The use of a word or phrase that is less direct but that is also less distasteful or less offensive than another.
“She has passed on.” Rather than “She has died.”
Expository writing
Writing that explains or analyzes
Hyperbole
And extravagant exaggeration of fact, used either for serious or comic effect.
Imagery
Likely descriptions which impress the images of things upon the mind, figures of speech.
Inverted syntax
Reversing the normal word order of a sentence,
“Yoda my name is. Jedi Knight am I.”
Irony
My favorite word!
A method of humorous or sarcastic expression in which the intended meaning of the words is the opposite of their usual meaning.
Describing a cold windy day as “lovely.”
Litotes
In rhetoric of the cure in which an affirmative is expressed by a negation of the contrary.
“A citizen of no mean city” is therefore “a citizen of an important or famous city.”