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Allegory
- Multiple levels of meaning and significance.
- Cupid portrayed as a chubby angel with a bow and arrows
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Alliteration
- The sequential repetition of a similar inital sound
- She sells seashells by the sea shore
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Allusion
- A reference
- the life and tribulations of Frederick Douglass to the trials of Job
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Anaphora
- Repetition of the same words or phrases at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses
- "to raise a happy, healthful, and hopeful child, it takes a family; it takes clergy; it takes..."
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Antithesis
- The juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words, phrases, grammatical structure, or ideas
- "To err is human, to forgive divine"
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Aphorism
- A concise statement designed to make a point or illustrate a commonly held belief
- "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
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Apostrophe
- an address or invocation to something inanimate
- "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are?"
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Appeals to... authority, emotion, logic
- rhetorical arguments i which the speaker claims to be an aithority or expert in a field, or attempts to play upon the emotions, or appeals to the use of reason
- ethos is authority or principle, logos is logic, and pathos is passion
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Assonance
- the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds
- She sells sea shells by the sea shore
- That solitude which suits abstruser musings.
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Asyndeton
- sytactical structure in which conjunctions are omitted in a series, usually producing more rapid prose
- Veni, Vidi, Vici
- The evening whispered perfume, the twilight warmed his eyes, the dancing melted her inhibitions, the second burrito grande spoiled his moment
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Attitude
The sense expressed by the tone of voice or the mood of a piece of writing
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Begging the Question
an argumentative ploy where the arguer sidesteps the question or the conflict, evades or ignores the real question.
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Cannon
that which has been accepted as authentic, such as in cannon law, or the "Cannon according to the theories of Einstein"
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Chiasmus
- a figure of speech/syntactical structure wherein the order of terms in the first half of a parallel clause is reversed in the second.
- "He thinks I am but a fool. A fool, perhaps I am."
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Claim
in arguemntation, an assertion of something as fact.
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Colloquial
- a tern identifying the diction of the common, ordinary folks, especially in a specific region or area.
- "Y'all"
- "Pop" or "Soda pop"
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Comparison and Contrast
a mode of discourse in which two or more things are contrasted, compared, or both.
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Connotation
the implied, sugessted, or underlying meaning of a word or phrase. It is opposite of denotation which is the "dictionary definition" of the word.
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Conceit
- a comparison of two unlikely things that is drawn out within a piece of literature, in particular an extended metaphor within a poem.
- "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances"
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Consonance
- the repetition of two or more consonants with a change in the intervening vowels
- pitter-patter
- splish-splash
- click-clack
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Convention
- An accepted manner, model, or tradition.
- whenever people think of the west people think of cowboys, cowboy boots, cacti, etc
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Critique
an assessment or analysis of something, such as a passage of writing, for the purpose of determining what it is, what its limitations are, and how it conforms to the standard of the genre
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Deduction
the method of argument in which specific statements and conclusions are drawn from general principles: movement from the general to the speific, in contrat to Induction
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Dialect
- the language and speech idiosyncrasies of a specific area, region, or group.
- minnesotans may say "you betcha"
- southerners, "y'all"
- new yorkers, "you's guys"
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Diction
The specific words choice an author uses to convey tone, purpose, or effect.
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Didactic
- (fom the Greek, meaning "good teaching") writing or speech is didactic when it has an instructive purpose or a lesson.
- an example would be aesop's fables
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Elegy
- a poem or prose work that laments, or meditates upon the death of, a person or persons.
- reminder, Elegy trumpet song
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Epistrophe
- in rhetoric, the repetition of a phrase at the end of successive sentences.
- (like hypophora)
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Epitaph
writing in praise of a dead person, most often inscribed upon a headstone.
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Euphemism
- an idirect way of expressing naughty things.. or just unpleasant things.
- We danced the mattress jig!
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Exposition
The interpretation or analysis of a text
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Eulogy
a speech or written passage in praise of a person; an oration in honor of a deceased person.
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Extended Metaphor
A series of comparisons within a piece of writing. If they are consistently one concept, this is also known as conceit
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