AP Lang - List #3

Connotation

• Def - the nonliteral, associative meaning of a word; the implied, suggested meaning.

  • Connotations may involve ideas, emotions, or attitudes.

Denotation

• Def - the strict, literal, dictionary definition of a word, devoid of any emotion, attitude, or color.

Diction

• Def - refers to the writer’s particular word choices, especially with regard to their correctness, clearness, or effectiveness.

  • Related to style

  • For the AP Lang exam, you should be able to describe an author’s diction and understand the ways in which diction can complement the writer's purpose.

  • Diction, combined with syntax, figurative language, literary devices, and so on, creates a writer’s style.

    
    

Didactic

• Def - didactic works have the primary aim of teaching or instructing, especially teaching moral or ethical principles.

  • From the Greek, “didactic” literally means “instructive.”

    
    

Epistrophe

• Def - deliberately repeating ending clauses or phrases in sentences to create effect.

  • For example, President Lyndon B. Johnson used epistrophe that urged people to come together for a common cause when he addressed Congress in 1965: “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.”

  • Anaphora is its opposite.