Style and Rhetoric Vocabulary Flashcards
What is ANAPHORA?
The intentional repetition of the beginning of a sentence in order to create an artistic effect.
What is ANTITHESIS?
A rhetorical device in which two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect.
What is ARCHAIC LANGUAGE?
A word, expression, spelling, or phrase that is out of date in the common speech of an era, but still deliberately used by a writer, poet, or playwright for artistic purposes.
What is ASYNDETON?
The artistic elimination of conjunctions in a sentence to create a particular effect.
Example: She eats, sleeps, dreams.
What is FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE?
Writing or speech that is not intended to carry literal meaning and is usually meant to be imaginative and vivid.
Examples: Hyperbole, simile, personification, and onomatopoeia.
What is IMAGERY?
The sensory details or figurative language used to describe, arouse emotion, or represent abstractions. On a physical level, this rhetorical device uses terms related to the five senses: visual, auditory, tactile, thermal (heat and cold), smell, taste, and movement.
What is IRONY?
The contrast between what is stated explicitly and what is really meant, or the difference between what appears to be and what is actually true.
Example: David sent an email to his professor saying how useless email is.
What is JUXTAPOSITION?
A literary technique in which two or more ideas, places, characters and their actions are placed side by side in a narrative or a poem for the purpose of developing comparisons and contrasts.
Example: Light and dark.
What is LOGICAL FALLACY?
Common errors in reasoning that can undermine a writer’s argument. These can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim.
What is PARADOX?
A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity.
Example: I am nobody.
What is PARALLELISM?
The grammatical or rhetorical framing of words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs to give structural similarity. This can involve, but is not limited to, repetition of a grammatical element such as a preposition or verbal phrase. Usually acts as an organizing force to attract the reader’s attention, add emphasis and organization, or simply provide a musical rhythm.
Example: Like father, like son.
What are the PATTERNS OF DEVELOPMENT?
The structural techniques writers use to most effectively illustrate their purposes to their respective audiences.
Examples: Cause and effect, classification and division, comparison and contrast, definition, description, exemplification, narration, and process analysis.
What are the RHETORICAL APPEALS?
The three main categories of persuasion–ethos, logos and pathos.
What is ETHOS?
Represents credibility or an ethical appeal which involves persuasion by the character involved.
Effects: Gains trust; those who claim to be an expert in a field often are appealing to this method of persuasion.
What is LOGOS?
A literary device that can be defined as a statement, sentence or argument used to convince or persuade the targeted audience by employing reason or logic.
