rhetorical vocab #5

Periphrasis

The substitution of an attributive word or phrase for a proper name, or the use of a proper name to suggest a personality characteristic.

persona

The character that a writer or speaker conveys to the audience.

purpose

The goal a writer or speaker hopes to achieve with the text, such as to clarify, inform, convince, and/or persuade.

recursive

Referring to the moving back and forth from invention to revision in the writing process.

refutation

The part of a speech in which the speaker anticipates objections and counters them.

repetition

The repeated use of sounds, words, phrases, or clauses to emphasize meaning or achieve effect.

rhetoric

The art of analyzing language choices that make a text meaningful, purposeful, and effective.

litotes

An understatement often used for emphasis or effect, such as 'Her performance ran the gamut of emotion from A to B.'

logic

The art of reasoning.

logos

The appeal of a text based on the logical structure of its argument or central ideas.

loose sentence

A sentence that adds modifying elements after the subject, verb, and complement.

metonymy

A figure of speech where an entity is referred to by one of its attributes or associations, such as 'The admissions office claims applications have risen.'

mnemonic device

A systematic aid to memory.

mood

The feeling that a text is intended to produce in the audience.

narrative intrusion

A comment made directly to the reader by breaking into the forward plot movement.

oxymoron

Juxtaposed words with seemingly contradictory meanings, for example, 'jumbo shrimp.'

paradox

A statement that seems untrue on the surface but is true nevertheless.

parallelism

A set of similarly structured words, phrases, or clauses that appears in a sentence or paragraph, creating a harmonious effect.

pathos

The appeal of a text to the emotions, values, or interests of the audience.

periodic sentence

A sentence with modifying elements included before the main clause.

rhetorical choices

The particular choices a writer or speaker makes to achieve meaning, purpose, or effect.

rhetorical question

A question posed by the speaker or writer not to seek an answer but instead to affirm or deny a point simply by asking a question about it.

rhetorical situation

The convergence in a situation of exigency (the need to write), audience, and purpose.

sarcasm

The use of mockery or bitter irony.

simile

A type of comparison that uses the word like or as.

simple sentence

A sentence with one independent clause and no dependent clause.

stance

A writer's or speaker's apparent attitude toward the audience.

style

The choices that writers or speakers make in language for effect.

subordinate clause

A group of words that includes a subject and verb but that cannot stand on its own as a sentence; also called dependent clause.

synecdoche

A part of something used to refer to the whole—for example, '50 head of cattle' referring to 50 complete animals.

syntax

The order of words in a sentence.

tone

The writer's or speaker's attitude toward the subject matter.

understatement

Deliberate playing down of a situation in order to make a point.

verisimilitude

The quality of a text that reflects the truth of actual experience.

voice

The textual features, such as diction and sentence structure, that convey a writer's or a speaker's persona.

zeugma

A trope in which one word, usually a noun or the main verb, governs two other words not related in meaning.