English Lit and Lang literary devices and authorial choices

Setting

The time and place of a text, including social, political, and cultural context, used to shape characters, tensions, and themes like power, identity, or justice.

Characterisation and character arc

How an author builds characters through description, dialogue, actions, and others’ reactions, and how those characters develop or transform across the text.

Theme

A central, recurring idea or question explored by the text, revealed through plot, character, and technique rather than stated directly.

Structure

The deliberate organisation of events and narrative time (for example linear or non‑linear order, acts, climaxes, framing) to control pacing, suspense, and emphasis.

Point of view (POV)

The perspective from which the story is told (first‑, second‑, third‑person), shaping what the reader knows and how they align with characters.

Focalisation

Whose perceptions and knowledge filter the events for the audience, determining how biased or limited the narrative view is.

Unreliable narrator

A narrator whose account is biased, limited, or manipulative so the reader must question how far to trust their version of events.

Second‑person address

Directly speaking to “you” to draw the audience into the text and blur the line between character and reader.

Dialogue

Spoken exchange between characters that reveals relationships, power dynamics, conflict, and subtext, and drives plot.

Stage directions

Written instructions in a play about movement, gesture, tone, and setting, used to visualise relationships and subtext on stage.

Physicality / proxemics

How characters’ positions, movements, and distances on stage express power, intimacy, conflict, or isolation.

Description

Prose detailing of people, places, and actions that creates atmosphere and reveals character and conflict.

Imagery

Language appealing to the senses to create vivid mental pictures and convey mood, setting, or emotional intensity.

Metaphor

A direct comparison between two unlike things to deepen meaning or present ideas in a fresh, surprising way.

Symbolism

When an object, place, character, or action carries additional meanings beyond its literal function, often linked to themes.

Foreshadowing

Hints or early events that anticipate later developments, building suspense and a sense of inevitability.

Irony

A contrast between appearance and reality, or expectation and outcome, often used to criticise characters or social structures.

Diction

An author’s choice of words, including connotations and level of formality, which shapes character, voice, and tone.

Tone

The writer’s or narrator’s attitude toward subject or characters (for example nostalgic, accusatory, foreboding) as communicated through style and content.

Register

The level and type of language (formal, informal, legalistic, colloquial) signalling class, education, and cultural background

Tragic form

A structure in which a protagonist with a flaw moves toward an inevitable, catastrophic downfall that evokes pity, fear, and catharsis.

Chorus / chorus‑like figure

A voice or character that comments on events, offers moral framing, and guides how the audience interprets the action.

Use of time

The manipulation of chronology (linear, flashback, frame) and pacing (slowing or speeding events) to highlight key moments and shape audience response.

Allegory

A narrative in which characters, settings, and events stand for abstract ideas or historical realities, so the whole text operates on both a literal and symbolic level.

Motif

A recurring image, symbol, phrase, or situation that gathers meaning across the text and reinforces key themes or character developments.

Juxtaposition

The deliberate placement of two ideas, characters, or images side by side to highlight contrast or reveal an unexpected similarity.

Paradox

A seemingly self‑contradictory statement or situation that, on closer inspection, reveals a deeper, often complex truth.

Oxymoron

A compact paradox combining two apparently contradictory words to create a striking, thought‑provoking effect.

Pathetic fallacy

The attribution of human emotions to elements of nature or setting to mirror or intensify characters’ feelings or the text’s mood.

Allusion

A brief, indirect reference to another text, event, figure, or cultural product that enriches meaning for readers who recognise it.

Intertextuality

The way a text echoes, reshapes, or dialogues with other texts to comment on them or position itself within a tradition.

Ambiguity

The purposeful openness of language, event, or ending to multiple plausible interpretations, forcing the reader to decide meaning.

Narrative gap

An intentional omission of information or events that invites the reader to infer, speculate, or question reliability.

In medias res

Beginning a narrative in the middle of the action to create immediate engagement and withhold background information for later.

Frame narrative

A story structure where one narrative encloses another, shaping how the inner story is filtered and interpreted.

Free indirect discourse

A technique that blends third‑person narration with a character’s internal thoughts and speech patterns without quotation marks.

Stream of consciousness

A style that attempts to reproduce the continuous, often chaotic flow of a character’s inner thoughts and perceptions.

Analepsis (flashback)

A shift to an earlier moment in the story world to provide background, motivation, or contrast with the present.

Prolepsis (flash‑forward)

A shift to a future moment in the story world to create anticipation, irony, or a sense of destiny.

Climax

The point of highest tension or decisive confrontation in the text, where the central conflict reaches a turning point.

Anti‑climax

A sudden drop from a serious or intense build‑up to something trivial or disappointing, often for irony or criticism.

Bathos

A shift from the elevated or serious to the bathetic or ridiculous, undercutting grandeur and exposing pretension or absurdity.

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggeration for emphasis, humour, or to convey the intensity of a character’s feelings or situation.

Understatement

Deliberately downplaying the significance of something to create irony, humour, or a sense of control.

Euphemism

A mild or indirect expression used in place of a harsh or taboo one, often revealing social attitudes or power relations.

Anaphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginnings of successive clauses or sentences to create emphasis and rhythm.

Epistrophe

The repetition of a word or phrase at the ends of successive clauses or sentences to reinforce an idea or emotional effect.

Asyndeton

The omission of conjunctions between parts of a list or series to speed up rhythm and create a sense of urgency or accumulation.

Polysyndeton

The repeated use of conjunctions between items in a list to slow rhythm, emphasise abundance, or create a heavy, overwhelming tone.

Caesura

A deliberate pause or break within a line or sentence that controls rhythm and draws attention to particular words or shifts.

Enjambment (in prose or drama)

The carrying of a phrase or idea over a line or sentence break, creating flow, tension, or surprise at the point of continuation.

Free verse / non‑metrical prose rhythm

A lack of strict metrical pattern, relying on natural speech rhythms and lineation or syntax for musicality.

Idiolect

The distinctive speech habits of a particular character, signalling identity, social background, and attitude.

Code‑switching

Shifts between languages, dialects, or registers within a text, highlighting identity conflict, power, or cultural hybridity.

Register shift

Movement between formal and informal language levels to mark changing relationships, contexts, or emotional states.

Satire

A mode that uses humour, irony, and exaggeration to criticise individuals, institutions, or social norms.

Pastoral or anti‑pastoral

The idealisation of rural life (pastoral) or its exposure as naive or exploitative (anti‑pastoral) to comment on society.

Metatheatre / metafiction

Moments when a play or narrative draws attention to itself as a constructed artefact, questioning reality and representation.

Dramatic irony

A situation where the audience knows more than a character, so their words or actions carry double meaning.

Verbal irony

A gap between what is said and what is meant, often signalled by context, tone, or contradiction.

Situational irony

A discrepancy between expected outcome and actual outcome, revealing the unpredictability or injustice of events.

Narrative pace

The relative speed at which events are narrated, manipulated through detail, sentence length, and scene selection to control tension.

Binary oppositions

Paired, opposing concepts (for example justice/law, insider/outsider) that structure conflict and thematic exploration.

Foil

A character whose contrasting traits highlight particular qualities of another character, often the protagonist.

Grotesque

The blend of the comic and the disturbing or monstrous to unsettle the reader and question social or moral norms.

Defamiliarisation

Presenting familiar objects or situations in a strange way so that readers see them afresh and question assumptions.