Rhetorical Terms Set 2

Allegory

an extended narrative in prose or verse in which characters, events, and settings represent abstract qualities and in which the writer intends a second meaning to be read beneath the surface of the story; the underlying meaning may be moral, religious, political, social, or satiric.

Anaphora

repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row. This is a deliberate form of repetition used to make the writer’s point more coherent. Example: “There was the delight I caught in seeing long straight rows. There was the faint, cool kiss of sensuality. There was the vague sense of the infinite…”

Anecdote

a short, simple narrative of an incident; often used for humorous effect or to make a point.

Aphorism

a short, often witty statement of a principle or truth about life. Example: “The early bird catches the worm.”

Cacophony

harsh, awkward, dissonant sounds used deliberately in poetry or prose; the opposite of euphony.

Conundrum

a riddle whose answer is or involves a pun; it may also be a paradox or difficult problem.

Didactic

writing whose purpose is to instruct or to teach. A didactic work is usually formal and focuses on moral or ethical concerns. Didactic writing may be fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking.

Dramatic Irony

when the reader is aware of an inconsistency between a fictional or nonfictional character’s perception of a situation and the truth of that situation (i.e., we know something that character does not).

Euphony

a succession of harmonious sounds used in poetry or prose; the opposite of cacophony.

False Analogy

when two cases are not sufficiently parallel to lead readers to accept a claim of connection between them.

Freight-Train

a sentence consisting of three or more very short independent clauses joined by conjunctions.

Invective

a verbally abusive attack.

Jargon

the special language of a profession or group. The term jargon usually has pejorative associations, with the implication that jargon is evasive, tedious, and unintelligible to outsiders. Examples: legal jargon, the jargon of literary critics.

Metonymy

a figure of speech that uses the name of an object, person, or idea to represent something with which it is associated, such as using “the crown” to refer to a monarch. Another example: “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Non-sequitur

Latin for “it does not follow”; an idea/statement that isn’t logically connected to another.

Oxymoron

a figure of speech composed of contradictory words or phrases, such as “wise fool,” “bittersweet,” “pretty ugly,” “jumbo shrimp,” or “cold fire.”

Pedantic

a term used to describe writing that borders on lecturing. It is scholarly and academic and often overly difficult and distant.

Personification

the attribution of human qualities to a nonhuman or an inanimate object.

Stream of Consciousness

like a first person narrator, but instead placing the reader inside the character’s head, making the reader privy to the continuous, chaotic flow of disconnected, half-formed thoughts and impressions in the character’s mind.

Polysyndeton

sentence which uses and or another conjunction (with no commas) to separate the items in a series. Polysyndeton appear in the form of X and Y and Z, stressing equally each member of a series. It makes the sentence slower and the items more emphatic than in the asyndeton.

Sarcasm

harsh, caustic personal remarks to or about someone; less subtle than irony in writing.

Straw Man

when a writer argues against a claim that nobody actually holds or is universally considered weak.

Syllogism

a form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them. A syllogism is the format of a formal argument that consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. Example:

Syntax

the grammatical structure of a sentence; the arrangement of words in a sentence. Syntax includes length of a sentence and the kinds of sentences (questions, exclamations, declarative sentences, rhetorical questions, simple, complex, or compound).

Voice

refers to two different areas of writing. One refers to the relationship between a sentence’s subject and verb (active and passive voice). The second refers to the total “sound” of a writer’s style.