Rhetorical Effects and Techniques Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering the key rhetorical effects, appeals, word choice, and structural techniques from the lecture notes.

Effect

The impact on the reader or audience produced by the techniques creators use in their texts.

Appeal to Ethics (Credibility)

Establishing trust and credibility based on the audience's impression of the speaker's morality, intelligence, likability, and relatability.

Appeal to Logic

An appeal based on facts, statistics, precedent, and the audience's sense of reasoning.

Appeal to Emotion

An appeal that hopes to pull at the heartstrings, make the audience laugh, instill fear, or incite rage or shock.

Characterization

The creation or construction of a fictional character, narrative voice, place, or idea.

Irony

When something happens that is the opposite of what you expect, or when someone says one thing but means the opposite.

Development of Conflict

The central struggle or problem that drives a narrative.

Internal Conflict

Character vs. Self.

External Conflict

Character vs. Character, Character vs. Nature, Character vs. Technology, Character vs. The Supernatural, or Character vs. Society.

Foreshadowing

A narrative device in which suggestions or warnings about events to come are dropped or planted.

Rhetorical Techniques

Tools or authorial choices that creators use to achieve their purpose, goal, or aim in the text.

Allusion

A reference to a well known person, place, event, or text.

Analogy

An extended comparison of two unlike things for the purpose of teaching or creating clarity.

Metaphor

Implied comparison achieved through a figurative use of words.

Simile

An explicit comparison between two things using 'like' or 'as'.

Imagery

Descriptive language that is used to appeal to one or more of the senses.

Personification

Giving human traits to inanimate objects.

Euphemism

A mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.

Dysphemism

A derogatory or unpleasant term used instead of a pleasant or neutral one.

Exclusive Pronouns

Words that replace nouns and exclude, such as I, you, they, and them.

Inclusive Pronouns

Words that replace nouns and include, such as we, our, and us.

Juxtaposition

Two elements placed close together with contrasting effect.

Paralanguage

The author's intentional use of punctuation, italics, CAPITALIZATION, bolding, and underlining to modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey specific emotions.

Anaphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines.

Epistrophe

Repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses.

Asyndeton

Lack of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words.

Polysyndeton

Intentional inclusion of successive conjunctions.

Rhetorical Question

A question asked in order to create a dramatic effect where the answer is so universally obvious it need not be stated.

Hypophora

A technique where the speaker poses a question and then straight away answers it.

Anecdote

A brief, engaging story used as a rhetorical device to illustrate a point, make an argument more relatable, or evoke an emotional response.