Ap Language Unit 1 Glossary Terms

Rhetorical Situation

The exigence, purpose, audience, writer, context, and message of a text.

Context

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

Exigence

The aspects of the rhetorical situation that prompted the writer or speaker to create that text , including its occasion.

Occasion

The time and place a speech is given or a piece is written.

Purpose

The goal that the writer or speaker of the text wants to achieve.

Rhetorical Triangle

A diagram that illustrates the interrelationship among the writer, audience, and subject of a text; another term for the Aristotlean triangle

Aristotelian Triangle

A diagram that illustrates the interrelationship among the writer, audience, and subject of a text; another term for the Rhetorical Triangle

Writer

The person or group that creates a text. this might be a politician who writes a speech, a commentator who writes an article, an artist who draws a political cartoon, or even a company that commissions an advertisement.

Speaker

The person who is speaking in a text/speech. This could be the writer/author, or this could be a character that the writer/author is speaking through.

Persona

Greek for “mask.” The face of a character that a speaker or writer shows to the audience.

Audience

The listener, viewer, or reader of a text. It has both shared and individual beliefs, values, needs, and backgrounds, Most texts are likely to have multiple audiences.

Message

The main idea or position the writer wants to convey to the audience about the subject of a text.

Subject

The topic of a text. What the text is about.

Rhetorical Appeals

Rhetorical techniques used to persuade an audience by emphasizing what they find most important or compelling.

Ethos

Greek for “character.” Writers and speakers appeal to this to demonstrate that they are credible and trustworthy to speak on a given topic. This is established by both who the speaker is and what the speaker says.

Logos

Greek for “embodied thought.”Writers and speakers appeal to reason by offering clear, rational ideas and using specific details, examples, facts, statistics, or expert testimony to back them up.

Counter Argument

An opposing argument to the one a writer is putting forward. Rather than ignoring a counterargument, a strong writer will usually address it through the process of concession and refutation.

Concession

An acknowledgement that a counterargument may be true or reasonable. In a strong argument, this is usually followed by a refutation challenging the validity of the opposing argument.

Refutation

A denial of the validity of the opposing argument. In order to sound reasonable, a this often follows a concession that the opposing argument may sound true or reasonable.

Rebuttal

This presents a contrasting perspective on an argument or its evidence, proposing that some or all of a competing position is unfounded.

Pathos

Greek for “suffering/experience.” Writers and speakers appeal to this to emotionally motivate their audience. More specific appeals to this may play on the audience’s values, desires, and hypes, on one hand, or fears and prejudices, on the other.

Style

The word choices writers make, the syntactical patterns they create in their writing, and the conventions of grammar and mechanics they use. These language choices help shape an audience’s perception of the work and the effectiveness of it’s argument.

Diction

A writer’s choice of words. In addition to choosing words with precise definition and connotation, a writer must choose whether to use words that are abstract or concrete, formal or informal, literal or figurative. Analysis of this looks at these choices and what they add to the speaker’s message.

Denotation

The literal definition of a word, often referred to as the “dictionary definition.”

Connotation

Meanings or associations the readers bring to words beyond their dictionary definitions/denotations. These can be positive or negative, and often affect the author’s tone.

Modifiers

An adjective, an adverb, a phrase, or a clause that modifies a noun, pronoun, or verb. The purpose of this is usually to describe, focus, or qualify.

Clause

A group of words containing both a subject and a verb.

Formal Diction

Diction that is formal.

Informal Diction

Diction that is informal.

Figurative Language

Language that uses figures of speech; non literal language usually evoking strong images. Sometimes referred to as metaphorical language, most of its forms explain, clarify, or enhance an idea by comparing it to something else. The comparison can be explicit (simile) or implied (metaphor). Other forms of this include (but are not limited to) personification, paradox, overstatement (hyperbole), understatement, and irony.

Metaphor

Figure of speech that compares two things without using “like” or “as.”

SImile

A figure of speech used to explain/clarify an idea by comparing it to something else, using the words “like”, “as”, or “as though” to do so.

Analogy

A comparison between two seemingly dissimilar things. Often, this uses something similar/familiar to explain something complex/unfamiliar.

Personification

Attribution of a lifelike quality to an inanimate object/idea.

Allusion

Brief reference to a person, an event, or a place (real or fictitious) or to a work of art.

Tone

A writer or speaker’s attitude toward a subject, conveyed by stylistic and rhetorical choices.

Shifts

A point in a text that indicates a change. Its most often a change in the writer’s/speaker’s tone or perspective.

Irony

An incongruity between expectation and reality.

Verbal Irony

A figure of speech that occurs when a speaker or character says one thing but means something else or when what is said is the opposite of what is expected.

Situational Irony.

A pointed discrepancy between what seems fitting/expected and what actually happens.

Dramatic Irony

Tension created by the contrast between what a character or writer says/thinks and what the audience knows to be true.

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis to produce a comic or ironic effect; an overstatement to make a point.

Understatement

The presentation or framing of something as less important, urgent, awful, good, powerful, and so on, then it actually is, often for satirical or comical effect. The opposite of hyperbole, it is often used with this technique and for similar effect.