Aice English Lang. AS - Linguistic Devices:

Context

The circumstances, atmosphere, attitudes, and events surrounding a text.

Audience

The listener, viewer, or reader of a text.

Purpose

One's intention or objective in a speech or piece of writing.

Form

Type of writing, relates to shape and overall presentation of a text.

Genre

A category of artistic composition, as in film or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content.

Structure

The way a text is organized and ordered; it can relate to both the whole text and the features of the text.

Tone

A writer's attitude toward the subject and audience, conveyed through diction, point of view, syntax, and level of formality.

Register

The formality or informality of language.

Alliteration

The repetition of an initial consonant sound.

Allusion

A brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or event—real or fictional.

Ambiguity

The quality or state of having more than one possible meaning; unclear or open to more than one interpretation.

Analogy

Reasoning or arguing from parallel cases.

Anaphora

The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.

Antithesis

An opposition or contrast; the rhetorical contrast of ideas by means of parallel arrangements of words, clauses, or sentences.

Assonance

The identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.

Asyndeton

The omission of conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses.

Chiasmus

Presentation of thoughts or ideas first presented one way, then in reverse order.

Cliché

A worn-out idea or overused expression.

Colloquial

Characteristic of writing that seeks the effect of informal spoken language.

Connotation

The emotional implications and associations that a word may carry.

Denotation

The direct or dictionary meaning of a word, in contrast to its figurative meanings.

Diction

The choice and use of words in speech or writing.

Ellipsis

Indicates a pause or missing information.

Epiphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the end of several clauses.

Euphemism

The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.

Figurative language

Language in which figures of speech (e.g., metaphors, similes) freely occur.

Figures of speech

Various uses of language that depart from customary construction, order, or significance.

Flashback

A shift in a narrative to an earlier event that interrupts the normal chronological development of a story.

Foreshadowing

The use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in a plot.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect.

Hypophora

A rhetorical term for a strategy in which a speaker raises a question and then immediately answers it.

Idiom

A figure of speech that does not maintain its culturally/socially accepted meaning when translated.

Imagery

Vivid descriptive language that appeals to one or more of the senses.

Innuendo

An allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically suggestive or disparaging.

Invective

Denunciatory or abusive language; discourse that casts blame on somebody or something.

Irony

The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning; a statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by appearance.

Jargon

The specialized language of a professional, often meaningless to outsiders.

Juxtaposition

Placing dissimilar items, descriptions, or ideas close together for comparison or contrast.

Lexicon

A dictionary; a specialized vocabulary used in a particular field or place.

Metaphor

A figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another closely associated with it.

Mood

The quality of a verb that conveys the writer's attitude toward a subject; the emotion evoked by a text.

Neologism

A new word, expression, or usage; the creation or use of new words or senses.

Onomatopoeia

The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

Oxymoron

A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side.

Paradox

A statement that appears to contradict itself.

Parody

A humorous but recognizable imitation of literature, art, or music for amusement or ridicule.

Personification

A figure