AP Lang: Vocab List 4

Point of View

The perspective from which the story is presented

First-Person Narrator

A narrator, referred to as "I," who is a character in the story and relates the actions through his or her own perspective, also revealing his or her own thoughts

Stream of Consiousness

Places the reader inside the character's head, making the reader privy to the continuous, chaotic flow of disconnected, half-formed thoughts and impressions in the character's mind

Omniscient Third-Person Narrator

Referred to as "he," "she," or "they," who is able to see into each character's mind and understands all the action

Limited Omniscient

A third person narrator who reports the thoughts of only one character and generally only what that one character sees

Objective

A third-person narrator who reports what would be visible to a camera; thoughts and feelings are only revealed if a character speaks of

Protagonist

The main character in a literary work

Red Herring

When a writer raises an irrelevant issue to draw attention away from the real issue

Regionalism

An element in literature that conveys a realistic portrayal of a specific geographical locale, using the locale and its influences as a major part of the plot

Repetition

Word or phrase used two or more times in close proximity

Rhetoric

The art of effective communication, especially persuasive discourse

Rhetorical Question

A question that does not expect an explicit answer

Sarcasm

Harsh, caustic personal remarks to or about someone; less subtle than irony

Satire

A work that reveals a critical attitude toward some element of human behavior by portraying it in an extreme way

Setting

Time and place of a literary work

Simile

A figure of speech that uses like, as, or as if to make a direct comparison between two essentially different objects, actions, or qualities

Speaker

The voice of a work; an author may speak as himself or herself or as a fictitious persona

Stereotype

A character who represents a trait that is usually attributed to a particular social or racial group and who lacks individuality; a conventional patter, expression or idea

Style

An author's characteristic manner of expression

Subjectivity

A personal presentation of events and characters, influenced by the author's feelings and opinions

Syllogism

A form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them

Symbolism

The use of symbols or anything that is meant to be taken both literally and as representative of a higher and more complex significance

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent a whole

Syntactic Fluency

Ability to create a variety of sentence structures, appropriately complex and/or simple and varied in length

Syntax

The grammatical structure of a sense; the arrangement of words in a sentence

Theme

The central idea or "message" of a literary work

Thesis

The main idea of a piece of writing that presents the author's assertion or claim

Tone

The characteristic emotion or attitude of an author toward the characters, subject, and audience

Understatement

The opposite of exaggeration

Voice

Refers to different areas of writing. One refers to the relationship between a sentence's subject and verb. The second refers to the total "sound" of a writer's style