AICE Language Devices

Thesis

The central claim and overall purpose of a work

Bias

a predisposition or subjective opinion

Call to action

Writing that urges readers to action or promote a change.

Anecdote

A short account of an interesting or humorous incident, intended to illustrate or support a point.

Analogy

A comparison to a directly parallel case; the process of drawing a comparison between two things based on a partial similarity of like features.

Idiom

An expression that means something other than the literal meanings of its individual words.

Tone

the voice and attitude the writer has chosen to project.

Mood

The overall atmosphere of a work and the mood is how that atmosphere makes a reader feel.

Antithesis

A contrast in language to bring out a contrast in

Allusion

a brief reference to a person, event, or place - real or fictitious - or to a work of art.

Generalization

When a writer bases a claim upon an isolated example or asserts

Juxtaposition

Placing two ideas side by side or close together.

Euphemism

Substitutions of an inoffensive, indirect, or agreeable expression

Paradox

a phrase or statement that while seeming contradictory or absurd may actually be well founded or true. Used to attract attention or to secure emphasis

Motif

recurrent images, words, objects, phrases, or actions that tend to

Persona

the character that the speaker portrays.

Cliche

A timeworn expression that through overuse has lost its power to

Irony

The discrepancy between appearance and reality: verbal, situational, dramatic.

Oxymoron

a self contradictory combination of words.

Logos

Appealing to logical reasoning and sound evidence

Ethos

appealing to the audience's shared values

Pathos

Evoking and manipulating emotions

Rhetorical Question

A question asked solely to produce an effect and not to elicit

Allegory

A narrative in which character, action, and setting represent abstract concepts apart from the literal meaning of a story. The underlying meaning usually has a moral, social, religious, or political significance

Metonymy

The substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself.

Declarative Sentence

makes a statement (sentence type)

Interrogative Sentence

asks a question (sentence type)

Imperative sentence

gives a command (sentence type)

Exclamatory sentence

makes an interjection (Sentence type)

Narration

A story presenting events in an orderly, logical sequence.

Description

Using sensory language and physical

Diction

choice of words in a work and an important element of style.

Colloquialism

words characteristic to familiar conversation

Denotation

specific, exact meaning of a word as defined

Connotation

The emotional implications that a word may carry

Polysyndeton

repetition of conjunctions inc lose succession

Satire

genre of writing used to critique or ridicule through humor or sarcasm

Parody

exaggerated imitation of a serious work or subject

Syntax

how a sentence is constructed

Simple sentence

a complete sentence that is neither compound, nor complex. (1 subject, 1 predicate.)

Compound sentence

a sentence that contains 2 independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction.

Complex sentence

An independent clause joined by one or more dependent clauses.

Antecedent

the word to which a pronoun refers

Parallelism

when the arrangement of parts of a sentence is similarly phrased or constructed

Loose sentence

When a sentence is grammatically complete before its end

Periodic sentence

when a sentence is not grammatically complete before its end

Anaphora

the same expression is repeated at the beginning of 2 or more consecutive lines

Chiasmus

second half of an expression is balanced against the first, but with the parts reversed

Synecdoche

part is used for a whole or the whole for a part