AP Lang - List #2

Apostrophe

• Def - figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or personified abstraction, such as liberty or love, or an inanimate object.

  • The effect may add familiarity or emotional intensity.

  • William Wordsworth addresses John Milton as he writes, “Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee,” and John Donne speaks directly to death when he writes “Death, be not proud.”

Asyndeton

• Def - a deliberate choice to eliminate conjunctions that would normally join phrases or clauses.

  • It creates speed and urgency.

  • For example, “I came. I saw. I conquered.” has more force than “I came, I saw, and then I conquered.”

Atmosphere

• Def - The emotional mood created by the entirety of a literary work, established partly by the setting and partly by the author’s choice of objects that are described.

  • Even such elements as description of weather can contribute to the atmosphere.

  • Frequently the atmosphere foreshadows events.

Clause

• Def - a grammatical unit that contains both a subject and a verb.

  • An independent/main clause expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence.

  • A dependent/subordinate clause cannot stand alone as a sentence and must be accompanied by an independent clause. “Because I practiced hard (dependent clause) my AP scores were high (independent clause).”

    
    

colloquialism

• Def - slang or informality in speech or writing.

  • Not generally acceptable in formal writing

  • Colloquialisms give language a conversational, familiar tone.