Scheme Flashcards
Alliteration
The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning or in the middle of two or more adjacent words.
Ex: “To make a man to meet the moral need/ A man to match the mountains and the sea” (Edwin Markham)
Anadiplosis
The repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause.
Ex: “Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state; servants of fame; and servants of business.” (Francis Bacon)
Anaphora
The repetition of a group of words at the beginning of successive clauses.
Ex: “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence…” (Winston Churchill)
Antecedent-Consequence Relationship
The relationship expressed by “if…then” reasoning.
Ex: If industries poison rivers with pollutants, then many fish will die.
Anthimeria
The substitution of one part of speech for another. It is the use of a word that is normally one part of speech in a situation that requires it to be understood as a different part of speech. In English, and this is one of its greatest virtues, almost any noun can be verbed.
Ex 1: “To scarf,” for example, was the verb implied in Hamlet’s speech, where he says, ‘My sea-gown scarf’d about me.’
Ex 2: The thunder would not peace at my bidding.
Ex 3: You jesus’d that.
Appeal
One of three strategies for persuading audiences–logos, appeal to reason; pathos, appeal to emotion; and ethos, appeal to ethics.
Ex: “I elicited the anger of some of the most aggressive teenagers in my high school. A couple of nights later, a car pulled up in front of my house, and the angry teenagers in the car dumped garbage on the lawn of my house as an act of revenge and intimidation.” (James Garbarino)
Appositive
A noun or noun phrase that follows another noun immediately or defines or amplifies its meaning.
Ex 1: Orion, my orange cat, is sitting on the couch.
Ex 2: Jake the Dog
Argument
A carefully constructed, well-supported representation of how a writer sees an issue, problem, or subject.
Ex: The Patriots prevailed over the Loyalists, who they violently persecuted due to their conflicting position; both betrayed the African slaves to temporarily bolster their military.
Aristotelian Triangle
A diagram showing the relations of writer or speaker, audience (reader or listener), and text in a rhetorical situation.
Canon
One of the traditional elements of rhetorical composition – invention, arrangement, style, memory, or delivery. Another word for category.
Ex: Frederick Douglass’s style (one aspect of canon) is both objective and subjective.
Casuistry
A mental exercise to discover possibilities for analysis of communication. Casuistry is reasoning used to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from particular instances and applying these rules to new instances.
Ex: Typically, casuistic reasoning begins with a clear-cut paradigmatic case. In legal reasoning, for example, this might be a precedent case, such as premeditated murder. From it, the casuist would ask how closely the given case currently under consideration matches the paradigmatic case. Cases like the paradigmatic case ought to be treated likewise; cases unlike the paradigm ought to be treated differently. Thus, a man is properly charged with premeditated murder if the circumstances surrounding his case closely resemble the exemplar premeditated murder case. The less a given case is like the paradigm, the weaker the justification is for treating that case like the paradigmatic case.
Dramatic Narration
A narrative in which the reader or viewer does not have access to the unspoken thoughts of any character.
Dynamic Character
One who changes during the course of the narrative.
Ex: Romeo is a dramatic character in Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare.
Evidence
The facts, statistics, anecdotes, and examples that a speaker or writer offers in support of a claim, generalization, or conclusion.
Ex: “Recent studies in the brain chemistry of rats show that when they play, their brains release large amounts of dopamine . . .” (Rifkin).
Metonymy
An entity referred to by one of its attributes or associations. The substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant.
Ex 1: “The press” for the news media.
Ex 2: Suit for business executive.
Ex 3: The track for horse racing.
