20 Essential APLANG Terms for Final Exam

Anaphora

repetition of the same word or groups of words at the beginnings of successive clauses

Antimetabole

repetition of words, in successive clauses, in reverse grammatical order

Antithesis

the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure

Asyndeton

deliberate omission of conjunction between a series of related clauses

Connotation

the non-literal, associative meaning of a word; the implied, suggested meaning of a word

Denotation

the strict, literal dictionary definition of a word

Ellipsis

deliberate omission of a word or of words that are readily implied by the context

Ethos

appealing to the audience using the speaker/writer's character and credibility

Hyperbole

the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis of heightened effect

Irony

use of a word in such a way as to convey a meaning opposite to the literal meaning of the word

Litotes

deliberate understatement, not to deceive someone but to enhance the impressiveness of what they say

Logos

appealing to the audience by playing on their reason by using facts, statistics, and expert quotations

Metonymy

substitution of some attributive or suggestive word for what is actually meant

Oxymoron

the yoking of two terms that are ordinarily contradictory

Parallelism

similarity of structure in a pair of series of related words, phrases, or clauses

Parenthesis

insertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactical flow of the sentence; can be accomplished using an emdash

Pathos

appealing to the audience by playing on their emotions

Polysyndeton

deliberate use of many conjunctions

Rhetorical Fragment

sentence fragment used deliberately for a persuasive purpose or to create a desired effect

Synecdoche

a figure of speech in which the part stands for the whole