rhetorical strategies terms

active voice

the subject performs the verb; “david wrote”

passive voice

the subject receives the verb; “the book was written by david”

allegory

like a parable; extended symbolic story with a moral message

alliteration

repetition of sounds at the beginning of words; blue bears bounce bigly

allusion

reference to another story or event

anaphora

repetition of words at the start of phrases

anadiplosis

words repeated from the end of one phrase to the beginning of another; “fair is foul, and foul is fair”

analepsis

flash-forward

prolepsis

flashback

antithesis

the contrast of two opposing ideas at the word or sentence level

juxtaposition

the contrast of opposing ideas at the thematic or symbolic level

apostrophe

addressing or speaking to someone or something that isn’t present in that moment

asyndeton

underuse of conjunctions; “veni, vidi, vici”

euphemism

figurative speech used to make something sound more pleasant

dysphemism

figurative speech used to make something sound more vulgar

rhetorical question

a question posed by the author that is left unanswered; the reader is supposed to wrestle with it for themself

hypophora

a question posed by the author which is then addressed in the next sentence

imperative sentence

a command

dramatic irony

when the audience knows something that the characters do not

polysyndeton

using more conjunctions than usual; “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”

tricolon

set of 3 phrases used for emphasis

telegraphic sentence

less then 5 words

short sentence

5 to 10 words

long sentence

more than 10 words

involved sentence

complex grammatical structure

inverted sentence

unusual word order; subject comes later in the sentence