English Literature, Linguistics, and Research Methodology Review

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering literary terms, critical theories, linguistics, poetry analysis, and research concepts from the lecture notes.

Ex-postfacto method

A research methodology used to explore and analyze aftereffects or causal relationships after an event or phenomenon has already occurred.

Oral representation

The formal act of speaking to a group of people in an official gathering.

APPIKO movement

A grassroots environmental and forest conservation movement based in the state of Karnataka.

Montreal Protocol

An international environmental treaty aimed at the reduction of ozone-depleting substances.

Webcast

A media presentation or broadcast distributed over the internet.

Hobson-Jobson

A historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and phrases compiled by Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell.

Wood's Despatch

An 1854 educational policy document in colonial India remembered particularly for its promotion of native languages alongside English.

Dreamwork

The psychoanalytic process conceptualized by Sigmund Freud through which unconscious desires and latent dream-thoughts are transformed into manifest dream imagery.

Epic theatre

A theatrical style associated with Bertolt Brecht that encourages political contemplation rather than emotional catharsis or illusion.

Banality of evil

A philosophical and political concept formulated by Hannah Arendt proposing that great evils in history can result from ordinary people thoughtlessly complying with institutional orders.

Aside

A theatrical and narrative convention in which a character addresses their thoughts aloud directly to the audience while remaining unheard by other characters on stage.

Subaltern

A critical term adopted by Antonio Gramsci to designate subordinate, non-elite social groups excluded from established structures of political representation and hegemony.

Native speaker fallacy

A term coined by Robert Phillipson describing the false and widespread assumption in English Language Teaching (ELT) that a native speaker is inherently the ideal teacher of the language.

Americanism

A term introduced by John Witherspoon to describe an American linguistic expression used for a concept already named in British English (such as 'elevator' for 'lift').

Pindaric ode

A classical regular ode form modeled on the Greek poet Pindar, structured into a tripartite choral progression of strophe (center), antistrophe (back), and epode (across), exemplified by Thomas Gray's 'Progress of Poesy'.

Lingua franca

A bridge or common language adopted systematically by speakers whose native tongues are mutually unintelligible in order to communicate.

Imagined communities

Benedict Anderson's concept defining a nation as a socially constructed community imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group.

Linguicism

Prejudice or systemic discrimination directed against individuals or groups based on their language, dialect, or speech variety.

Verisimilitude

The appearance of being true or real; the closeness of a work of fiction or drama to reality.

Diglossia

A sociolinguistic condition in which two distinct varieties of the same language coexist across a speech community, typically split into high and low functional registers.

Restoration

The historical return of the traditional monarchical rule in England under King Charles II in 1660.

Great Vowel Shift (GVS)

A major chain-shift phonological change occurring between the 15th and 18th centuries in which the pronunciation of long vowels in English shifted upward in mouth position or broke into diphthongs.

Diacritical mark

A glyph or symbol placed above or below a letter (such as an umlaut 'ü') to indicate a specific phonetic value, pitch, or stress.

Enjambment

Also called run-on lines; the continuation of a sentence or poetic clause from one poetic line into the next without terminal punctuation or an audible pause.

New historicism

A critical approach pioneered by Stephen Greenblatt that interprets literary texts by situating them within their broader historical, social, and cultural contexts.

Paradigm shift

A fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline, as articulated by Thomas Kuhn in 1962.

The Kuhn Cycle

Thomas Kuhn's cyclical model of scientific evolution consisting of Pre-Science, Normal Science, Model Drift, Model Crisis, Model Revolution, and Paradigm Change.

Normal science

A phase within Kuhn's cycle where the scientific community works within an accepted paradigm, engaging in routine 'puzzle-solving' without challenging its core assumptions.

Loss of Aura

Walter Benjamin's concept positing that mass technical reproduction (such as prints, photography, and film) strips art of its unique presence, authenticity, and ritual aura.

Contact zone theory

Mary Louise Pratt's formulation of social spaces where disparate cultures encounter, clash, and grapple with one another, often under conditions of radical asymmetrical power like colonialism.

Heuristic pedagogy

A teaching philosophy and method where students learn actively by investigating, discovering, and solving problems through their own independent experiences.

Heuristic

A practical problem-solving mental shortcut or 'rule of thumb' (from the Greek 'heuriskein', meaning 'to find') used to achieve a good-enough solution quickly.

Intelligibility

In English Language Teaching (ELT), the degree to which individual spoken or written words can be correctly decoded and identified by a listener.

Chora

A term borrowed from Plato's 'Timaeus' by Julia Kristeva to designate the maternal, pre-linguistic stage driven by rhythmic pulses, drives, and feelings before entering structured language.

Symbolic order

Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan's designation for the structured, patriarchal linguistic realm governed by language, social laws, and formal communication that an individual enters upon leaving the chora.

Catharsis

The emotional purgation, cleansing, or release of pity and fear evoked in the audience by dramatic tragedy.

Predatory publishing

An exploitative academic publishing practice that prioritizes financial profit and deception over peer review, transparency, and scholarly integrity.

Pathetic fallacy

A literary device that attributes human emotions, feelings, and intentions to inanimate objects or aspects of nature.

Seven Types of Ambiguity

A foundational text of New Criticism written by William Empson in 1930 analyzing the different ways poetic language achieves layers of multiple meaning.

Caesura

A conscious rhythmic break or pause within a line of verse, often indicated in formal metrical scansion by a double vertical bar ($| |$).

Hiatus

A pronunciation pause or break caused by the collision of two consecutive vowel sounds across adjacent syllables or words.

Burlesque

A dramatic or literary work that mocks or parodies serious subjects, genres, or styles through comical imitation and caricatured exaggeration.

Farce

A comedic dramatic work built around improbable, highly exaggerated, and chaotic situations, physical humor, and mistaken identities.

Curtal sonnet

A shortened sonnet form of 10.5 lines invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins, prominently exemplified by his poem 'Pied Beauty'.

Scansion

The formal metrical analysis of verse used to identify metrical feet, syllable counts, and patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Metrical foot

The basic rhythmic unit of scansion in poetry, composed of a specific sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Frontier thesis

Frederick Jackson Turner's argument that the continuous line of settlement and cultural boundary of the western American frontier decisively shaped American democracy and character.

Cavalier poets

A group of 17th-century English royalist lyric poets associated with the court of King Charles I, notably including Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, and Thomas Carew.