Terms for Essay/Short Story Analysis Flashcards
extravagant exaggeration used to emphasize a point. “mile-high ice cream cones” is an example of this
Hyperbole
an idea or belief that is not true, or something that is not what it seems to be. a misrepresentation of a “real” sensory stimulus.
illusion
occurs when events or words are the opposite of what is expected, creating a sense of surprise, humor, or deeper meaning in literature, rhetoric, and everyday situations.
Irony
a recurring symbol. It is a common literary device that helps to establish a theme or mood. (a repeated quote like in Fight Club, an object like in Lord of the Flies, or a theme like in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. They are especially prevalent in fairy tales.)
Motif
a statement or situation that may be true but seems impossible or difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics.
ex.
- Youth is wasted on the young.
- Less is more.
- The only constant is change.
- You have to spend money to make money.
- The only rule is there are no rules.
- I can resist anything except temptation.
- It’s hard making elegance look easy.
- The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.
Paradox
when a character addresses someone or something that isn’t present or cannot respond. The character might speak to someone deceased, an inanimate object, or a concept. Example: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.
Apostrophe
everyday language used by people of a certain region. In the UK, you might leave your “flat” to go to the “football” game, while in the US, you’d leave your “apartment” to go to the “soccer” game. Colloquial language is casual and conversational.
colloquial language
a form of writing that shows the accent and way people talk in a particular region.
Dialect
non-literal wording that adds creativity or rhetorical meaning to your writing. It invites the reader to use their senses or prior knowledge to understand your meaning. For example: This coffee shop is an icebox! She’s drowning in a sea of grief.
figurative language
a joke based on the interplay of homophones — words with the same pronunciation but different meanings. It can also play with words that sound similar, but not exactly the same. The joke’s humor (if any) comes from the confusion of the two meanings.
Pun
the repetition of vowel sounds in words that are close together in a sentence or verse. For example, “His tender heir might bear his memory” (William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 1”). The “eh” sound in “tender,” “heir,” “bear,” and “memory” is an assonant sound.
Assonance
a blend of unharmonious sounds. The word originates from Greek, actually meaning ‘bad sound. ‘
(in his classic poem “The Raven,” Edgar Allan Poe uses the “G” sound in a cacophony when he writes, “What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore.”Or in William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” the three witches’ chant of “Double, double toil and trouble,” repeats the “D” and “T” sounds to)
Cacophony
represents nonhuman entities as if they had human qualities. For example, the sentence “The leaves danced in the wind” personifies the leaves because it describes them as if they had the ability to dance. Anthropomorphism portrays a nonhuman entity as if it had human traits, feelings, and behaviors.
Personification
a saying or expression that has been so overused that it has become boring and unoriginal. Think about the expressions “easy as pie,” or “don’t play with fire,” or “beauty is skin deep.” These are all cliches.
Cliche
the relation between the time of the utterance and the time the utterance is about. Tense is just one of the means available to language to attain ——, other means are temporal adverbs/adverbials and aspectual properties.
Temporal Reference
extra force that you put on a syllable, word, or phrase when you are speaking in order to make it seem more important.
Emphasis
an object, a person, a situation, or an action that has a literal meaning in a story but suggests or represents other meanings.
Symbol
a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the words “like” or “as.”
Simile
a figure of speech that implicitly compares two unrelated things, typically by stating that one thing is another (without the use of like or as)
Metaphor
a figure of speech, in which an object or circumstance from an unrelated context is referred to covertly or indirectly. It is left to the audience to make a direct connection. Where the connection is directly and explicitly stated by the author, it is instead usually termed a reference.
Allusion
the selection of words an author uses to create a specific impact or tone in their writing.
Diction
contains two or more main clauses but no subordinate clauses. The main clauses are always joined in one of three ways:
- Two main clauses may be joined by a comma and one of seven coordinating conjunctions (and, or, nor, but, for, so, yet).
-Two main clauses may be joined by a semicolon (;)
- Two main clauses may be joined by a semicolon and a transitional word or phrase.
Compound Sentence
Features only one main clauses and always contains at least one subordinate clause and sometimes more than one. The subordinate clauses in the sentence may occur at any place in the sentence.
Complex sentence
a combination of different types of sentences. It is made up of two or more main clauses and one or more subordinate clauses. Therefore, it must contain a minimum of three sets of subjects and verbs (at least two main clauses and at least one subordinate clause).
Compound-Complex Sentence
A sentence that contains only one main clause and no other clauses.
Ex. The plane flew over the stadium
Simple sentence
a usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident.
Ex. a person telling a story about the time that they saw three black cats run across the street is an example of this.
Anecdote
a group of words containing a subject and predicate and functioning as a member of a complex (see complex entry 2 sense 1b(2)) or compound (see compound entry 3 sense 3b) sentence. The sentence “When it rained they went inside” consists of two ——–’s: “when it rained” and “they went inside.”
clause
a —— that does not form a simple sentence by itself and that is connected to the main ——– of a sentence. In the sentence “I went home because I felt ill,” “because I felt ill” is a subordinate clause.
subordinate clause
