Rhetorical Terms/Strategies Part 3

an expression that is inserted into the flow of thought. It may be in the middle of a sentence or between sentences, but it does not deal directly with the topic at hand. These are set off by dashes or parentheses.

mimicking someone else's work or style in a humorous or satirical way

from the Latin pastor, "shepherd," is literally the poetry or songs of the shepherds. Part of the pastoral ideal is otium-- leisure-- of or relating to the countryside

when the narrator takes on a persona of his own, rather than remaining objective, the reader must take into consideration his biases and intents

attributing human qualities to an inanimate object

an episodic, often autobiographical novel about a rogue or picaro (a person of low social status) wandering and living off his wits. The wandering hero provides the author with the opportunity to connect widely different pieces of plot; these novels tend to be satiric and filled wit petty detail

literary term for the perspective from which a story is told (first, third, omniscient, limited)

the combination of two or more words to make a new word

the use of many conjunctions. has the effect of slowing the pace or emphasizing the numerous words or clauses

a humorous play on words

using the same word or phrase over and over; takes forms such as anaphora, epanalepsis, epistrophe

repetition at the end of a clause a word that occurred at the beginning

the art or study of speaking and writing effectively

(see SOAPS) the triangle created by the speaker/writer, the audience, and the occasion; affects what is said or written

questions that do not require an answer, may be:

-directed to the reader, meant to involved the reader

-addressed to the writer, meant to review ideas raised

-criticizing

-asking and answering, meant to highlight the author's method of development of ideas

a type of irony in which a person appears to praise something but actually insults it; its purpose is to injure or hurt

a composition ridiculing human vice or folly; a keen or severe exposure of what in public or private morals deserves rebuke

figures of speech in which word order in altered from the usual or expected

the study of the larger system of meaning created by words

-balanced
-complex, compound, compound-complex, simple,
-declarative, exclamatory, imperative, rhetorical
-fragment
-inverted
-loose
-natural
-periodic

when a section of the text undergoes a noticeable or subtle change

an explicit comparison between two unlike things signified by the use of like or as

technique that records the thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to logical argument or narrative sequence; reflects all the forces, internal and external, affecting the character's psyche at the moment

the phrase "the author's style" is often seen in AP prompts and is asking the student to discuss how the author uses words, phrases, and sentences to form ideas. In other words, analyze the rhetorical techniques

a person, place, thing, or event used to represent something else

the rhetorical substitution of a part for the whole

a rhetorical device that mixes elements of the senses

see handout.

word order/ the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences

a statement of purpose, intent, or main idea in a literary work

figures of speech in which meaning is altered from the usual or expected

deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying its opposite

the characteristic language of a particular group (see also colloquialism); often slang or informal

the Voice is the writer coming through the words, the sense that a real person is speaking to us and cares about the message. It is the heart and soul of the writing, the magic, the wit, the feeling, the life and breath

a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter (see also parody, pun, satire)

when two different words that sound exactly alike are yoked together; when a preposition or verb has two or more objects on different levels