AP Language and Composition Glossary

Active Voice

• The subject performs the action.
• Direct and preferred in writing.
• Example: "Anthony drove while Toni searched for the house."
• Passive voice is the opposite, where the subject receives the action.
• Passive voice can lead to lifeless writing and should be avoided when possible.
• Example: "The car was driven by Anthony."

Allusion

• An indirect reference to a familiar literary text, historical event, song or play.

Alter-Ego

• A character used by the author to speak their own thoughts.
• The author speaking directly to the audience through a character.
• Example: Shakespeare in The Tempest using Prospero to talk about his retirement.
• Not to be confused with persona.

Anecdote

• A brief recounting of a relevant episode, often used to develop a point or inject humor.

Antecedent

• The word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun.
• Example: "If I could command the wealth of all the world by lifting my finger, I would not pay such a price for it."
• "it" refers to "the wealth of all the world."

Classicism

• Art or literature with a realistic view of people and the world.
• Sticks to traditional themes and structures.
• Opposite of romanticism.

Comic Relief

• Humorous scene inserted into a serious story to lighten the mood.
• Example: The "gatekeeper scene" in Macbeth.

Diction

• Word choice as an element of style.
• Different words affect meaning.
• Academic diction is precise but less colorful than street slang.
• Describe the type of diction (formal, informal, ornate, plain) instead of stating "The author uses diction."

Colloquial

• Ordinary or familiar conversation.
• A colloquialism is a common or familiar saying.
• Similar to an adage or aphorism.

Connotation

• Associations suggested by a word, implied meaning rather than literal meaning.
• Example: "Policeman," "cop," and "The Man" have the same denotation but different connotations.

Denotation

• The literal, explicit meaning of a word without connotations.

Jargon

• Diction used by a group that practices a similar profession or activity.
• Lawyers and soccer players use particular jargon.

Vernacular

• Language or dialect of a particular country.
• Language or dialect of a regional clan or group.
• Plain everyday speech.

Didactic

• Fiction, nonfiction, or poetry that teaches a specific lesson or moral.
• Provides a model of correct behavior or thinking.

Adage

• A folk saying with a lesson.
• Example: “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”
• Similar to aphorism and colloquialism.

Allegory

• A story (fictional or non-fictional) where characters, things, and events represent qualities or concepts.
• The interaction reveals an abstraction or a truth.
• Example: Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Aphorism

• A terse statement which expresses a general truth or moral principle.
• A memorable summation of the author's point.
• Example: Ben Franklin's sayings in Poor Richard's Almanac, such as “God helps them that help themselves,” and “A watched pot never boils.”

Ellipsis

• Deliberate omission of a word or phrase for effect.
• Example: “The whole day, rain, torrents of rain.”
• Related to the ellipse, which is the three periods used to show omitted text in a quotation.

Euphemism

• A more agreeable or less offensive substitute for unpleasant words or concepts.
• Used for political correctness or to add humor.
• Examples: “Physically challenged” instead of “crippled,” “vertically challenged” instead of “short.”

Figurative Language

• Language that is not meant to be taken literally.
• Opposite of literal language.

Analogy

• A comparison of one pair of variables to a parallel set of variables.
• Argues that the relationship between the first pair is the same as the second pair.
• Example: “America is to the world as the hippo is to the jungle.”
• Similes and metaphors can be analogies.

Hyperbole

• Exaggeration.
• Example: “My mother will kill me if I am late.”

Idiom

• A common, often used expression that doesn’t make sense if taken literally.
• Example: “I got chewed out by my coach.”

Metaphor

• An implied comparison, not using “like” or “as.”
• Example: “My feet are popsicles.”
• Extended metaphor: a metaphor continued later in the written work.
• Conceit: A particularly elaborate extended metaphor.

Metonymy

• Replacing an actual word or idea with a related word or concept.
• Example: “Relations between London and Washington have been strained” (referring to the leaders).
• Often used with body parts: “I could not understand his tongue” (meaning language or speech).

Synecdoche

• A kind of metonymy where a whole is represented by naming one of its parts, or vice versa.
• Examples: “The cattle rancher owned 500 head,” “Check out my new wheels.”

Simile

• Using words such as “like” or “as” to make a direct comparison between two very different things.
• Example: “My feet are so cold they feel like popsicles.”

Synesthesia

• A description involving a “crossing of the senses.”
• Examples: “A purplish scent filled the room,” “I was deafened by his brightly-colored clothing.”

Personification

• Giving human-like qualities to something that is not human.
• Example: “The tired old truck groaned as it inched up the hill.”

Foreshadowing

• When an author gives hints about what will occur later in a story.

Genre

• The major category into which a literary work fits (prose, poetry, drama).
• Subdivisions exist within genres (lyric, dramatic, narrative poetry).
• AP Language exam focuses on autobiography, biography, diaries, criticism, essays, and journalistic, political, scientific, and nature writing.

Gothic

• Writing characterized by gloom, mystery, fear, and/or death.
• Also relates to an architectural style of the middle ages.

Imagery

• Words that create a picture in the reader's mind.
• Involves the five senses.
• Often used with metaphors, similes, or figures of speech.

Invective

• A long, emotionally violent attack using strong, abusive language.

Irony

• When the opposite of what you expect to happen does.
• Verbal irony: Saying something and meaning the opposite; sarcasm is bitter verbal irony.
• Dramatic irony: Audience knows something the character doesn't.
• Situational irony: Found in the plot; funny how things turn out.

Juxtaposition

• Placing things side by side for comparison.
• Used to make a point (e.g., comparing the average day of an American to someone in the third world).

Mood

• The atmosphere created by the literature.
• Accomplished through word choice (diction).
• Syntax, setting, tone, and events can all affect the mood.

Motif

• A recurring idea in a piece of literature.
• Example: In To Kill a Mockingbird, the idea that “you never really understand another person until you consider things from his or her point of view.”

Oxymoron

• Apparently contradictory terms grouped together suggesting a paradox.
• Examples: “wise fool,” “eloquent silence,” “jumbo shrimp.”

Pacing

• The speed or tempo of an author’s writing.
• Uses devices like syntax, polysyndeton, anaphora, meter to change pacing.
• Pacing can be fast, sluggish, stabbing, vibrato, staccato, measured, etc.

Paradox

• A seemingly contradictory situation which is actually true.
• Example: “You can't get a job without experience, and you can't get experience without getting a job.”

Parallelism

• Sentence construction with equal grammatical constructions near each other or repeating identical grammatical patterns.
• Adds emphasis, organization, or pacing.
• Example: “Cinderella swept the floor, dusted the mantle, and beat the rugs.”
• Anaphora: Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences or clauses in a row.
• Chiasmus: Words used twice in succession, but the second time in reverse order.
  • Example: “Fair is foul and foul is fair,” Also called antimetabole.
• Antithesis: Two opposite or contrasting words, phrases, clauses, or ideas with parallel structure.
  • Example: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
• Zuegma (Syllepsis): A single word governs or modifies two or more other words, with the meaning of the first word changing.
  • Example: “The butler killed the lights, and then the mistress,” “I quickly dressed myself and the salad.”

Parenthetical Idea

• Parentheses used to set off an idea from the rest of the sentence, like an aside.
• Should be used sparingly.
• Example: “In a short time (and the time is getting shorter by the gallon) America will be out of oil.”

Parody

• An exaggerated imitation of a serious work for humorous purposes.
• Borrows words or phrases; pokes fun at it.
• A form of allusion.
• Examples: The Simpsons parodying Shakespeare, Saturday Night Live parodying famous people and events.
• Not to be confused with satire.

Persona

• The fictional mask or narrator that tells a story.
• Do not confuse with alter-ego.

Poetic Device

• A device used in poetry to manipulate the sound of words, sentences, or lines.
• Alliteration: Repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of words.
  • Example: “Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore.”
• Assonance: Repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds.
  • Example: “From the molten-golden notes.”
• Consonance: Repetition of the same consonant sound at the end of words or within words.
  • Example: “Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door."
• Onomatopoeia: A word which imitates or suggests the sound that the thing makes.
  • Examples: Snap, rustle, boom, murmur.
• Internal rhyme: A rhyme within a single line of poetry.
  • Example: “To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!”
• Slant rhyme: Words that are merely similar, not exact rhymes.
  • Example: “I sat upon a stone, / And found my life has gone.”
• End rhyme: Rhyme at the end of two different lines of poetry.
  • Example: “Roses are red, violets are blue, / Sugar is sweet, and so are you.”
• Rhyme Scheme: The pattern of a poem’s end rhymes.
  • Example: a b a b c d c d: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? a / Thou art more lovely and more temperate. b / Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. a / And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. b / Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines c / And often is his gold complexion dimmed d / And every fair from fair sometime declines c / By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed d”
• Stressed and unstressed syllables: In every word of more than one syllable, one of the syllables is stressed, or said with more force than the other syllable(s).
• Meter: A regular pattern to the syllables in lines of poetry.
• Free verse: Poetry that doesn’t have much meter or rhyme.
• Iambic pentameter: Poetry written in lines of 10 syllables, alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. Example: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
• Sonnet: A 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter, usually divided into three quatrains and a couplet.

Polysyndeton

• A list of items separated by conjunctions (normally, a conjunction is used only before the last item).
• Examples: “I walked the dog, and fed the cat, and milked the cows,” “Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcass of an unclean beast, or a carcass of unclean cattle, or the carcass of unclean creeping things…he also shall be unclean.”
• Often used to slow down the pace and/or add an authoritative tone.

Pun

• A word with two or more meanings used in a humorous way.
• Examples: “My dog has a fur coat and pants!” “I was stirred by his cooking lesson.”

Rhetoric

• The art of effective communication.
• Aristotle’s Rhetorical Triangle: The relationships between the writer, the audience, and the subject.
• All analysis of writing is an analysis of the relationships between the points on the triangle.

Rhetorical Question

• A question not asked for information but for effect.
• Example: “The angry parent asked the child, ‘Are you finished interrupting me?’”

Romanticism

• Art or literature with an idealistic, unrealistic view of people and the world, and an emphasis on nature.
• Does not rely on traditional themes and structures.
• Opposite of classicism.

Sarcasm

• A generally bitter comment that is ironically or satirically worded.
• The bitter, mocking tone separates it from mere verbal irony or satire.

Satire

• A work that reveals a critical attitude toward some element of life to a humorous effect.
• Targets human vices and follies, or social institutions and conventions.
• Good satire has three layers: serious on the surface, humorous upon discovery, and serious upon discerning the underlying point.

Sentence

• A group of words (including subject and verb) that expresses a complete thought.
• Appositive: A word or group of words placed beside a noun to supplement its meaning.
  • Example: “Bob, the lumber yard worker, spoke with Judy, an accountant from the city.”
• Clause: A grammatical unit with a subject and verb.
  • Independent clause: Expresses a complete thought and can stand alone.
  • Dependent clause: Cannot stand alone and must be accompanied by an independent clause.
    • Example: “Other than baseball, football is my favorite sport.”
• Sentence structures:
  • Balanced sentence: Two parallel elements set off against each other.
    • Example: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” (also called parallelism).
  • Compound sentence: At least two independent clauses but no dependent clauses.
  • Complex sentence: One independent clause and at least one dependent clause.
  • Cumulative sentence: Begins with an independent clause, then adds subordinate elements.
    • Example: “He doubted whether he could ever again appear before an audience, his confidence broken, his limbs shaking, his collar wet with perspiration.” (also called a loose sentence).
  • Periodic sentence: Main idea is not completed until the end with subordinate elements preceding.
    • Example: “His confidence broken, his limbs shaking, his collar wet with perspiration, he doubted whether he could ever again appear before an audience.”
  • Simple sentence: Only one independent clause.
• Sentence types:
  • Declarative sentence: States an idea.
    • Example: “The ball is round.”
  • Imperative sentence: Issues a command.
    • Example: “Kick the ball.”
  • Interrogative sentence: Incorporates interrogative pronouns (what, which, who, whom, whose).
    • Example: “To whom did you kick the ball?”

Style

• The choices in diction, tone, and syntax that a writer makes, either consciously or unconsciously.

Symbol

• Something concrete (object, action, character) that represents something more abstract.
• Examples: The Whale in Moby Dick, the river and the jungle in Heart of Darkness, and the Raven in “The Raven.”

Syntax/Sentence Variety

• Grammatical arrangement of words.
• Examine sentence length and structure in relation to tone and meaning.
• Consider simple, compound, compound-complex sentences.
• Syntax is the grouping of words, while diction is the selection of individual words.

Theme

• The central idea or message of a work.
• May be directly stated in nonfiction but rarely in fiction.

Thesis

• The sentence or group of sentences that expresses the author's opinion, purpose, meaning, or proposition.
• Should be short and clear (also see argument).

Tone

• A writer's attitude toward his subject matter revealed through diction, figurative language, and organization.
• Consider how the piece would sound if read aloud.
• Tone can be playful, serious, businesslike, sarcastic, humorous, formal, somber, etc.

Understatement

• The ironic minimizing of fact; presenting something as less significant than it is.
• Often humorous.
• Example: “Our defense played valiantly, and held the other team to merely eight touchdowns in the first quarter.”
• Litotes: A particular form of understatement, generated by denying the opposite of the statement.
  • Examples: "Hitting that telephone pole certainly didn't do your car any good" or "The flavors of the mushrooms, herbs, and spices combine to make the dish not at all disagreeable".

Rhetorical Terms Related to Logic and Argumentation

• Argument: A piece of reasoning with one or more premises and a conclusion.
• Every essay is an argument that begins with the conclusion (thesis) and then sets up the premises.
• Argument is also called a claim, a position, or a stance.
• Premises: Statements offered as reasons to support a conclusion.
  • Example: "All Spam is pink"; "I am eating Spam"
• Conclusion: The end result of the argument – the main point being made.
  • Example: "I am eating something that is pink"

Aristotle’s Appeals

• Goal is to persuade an audience that one’s ideas are valid or more valid than someone else's.
• Ethos (credibility): Being convinced by the credibility of the author.
  • Convincing the audience that the writer is an authority and worthy of respect.
  • Over-reliance can become a fallacy.
• Pathos (emotional): Persuading by appealing to the reader's emotions.
  • Over-reliance can become a fallacy.
• Logos (logical): Persuading by the use of reasoning, using true premises and valid arguments.
  • Generally considered the strongest form of persuasion.

Concession

• Accepting at least part or all of an opposing viewpoint.
• Strengthens the argument by showing willingness to accept what is obviously true and reasonable.
• Sometimes called multiple perspectives.
• Sometimes followed by a rebuttal.

Conditional Statement

• An if-then statement with an antecedent and a consequent.
• Example: “If you studied hard, then you will pass the test.”
• Conditional statements are often used as premises in an argument.
  • Example: Premise: "If I eat Spam, then I will throw up.", Premise: "I have eaten Spam.", Conclusion: "Ergo, I will throw up."

Contradiction

• Asserting two mutually exclusive propositions.
• Example: “Abortion is wrong and abortion is not wrong.”
• Since a claim and its contradictory cannot both be true, one of them must be false.

Counterexample

• An example that runs counter to (opposes) a generalization, thus falsifying it.
• Example: Premise: "Jane argued that all whales are endangered.", Premise: "Belugas are a type of whale.", Premise: "Belugas are not endangered.", Conclusion: "Therefore, Jane’s argument is unsound."

Deductive Argument

• Premises provide a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion.
• If the premises are true, it would be impossible for the conclusion to be false.

Fallacy

• An attractive but unreliable piece of reasoning.
• Common examples:
  • Ad hominem: Attacking the person instead of the argument.
  • Appeal to authority: Claiming an idea is right because a famous person supports it.
  • Appeal to the bandwagon: Claiming an idea is right because many people believe it.
  • Appeal to emotion: Replacing a logical argument with an appeal to emotions.
  • Bad analogy: Claiming two situations are highly similar when they aren't.
  • Cliche thinking: Using a well-known saying as if it is proven.
  • False cause: Assuming that because two things happened, the first one caused the second one (sequence is not causation).
  • Hasty generalization: A generalization based on too little or unrepresentative data.
  • Non Sequitur: A conclusion that does not follow from its premises; an invalid argument.
  • Slippery slope: Assuming that a situation will continue to its most extreme possible outcome.

Inductive Argument

• Premises provide reasons supporting the probable truth of the conclusion.
• If premises are true, it is unlikely that the conclusion is false.

Sound Argument

• A deductive argument that is valid and has true premises.

Unstated Premises

• Arguments where premises or conclusions are left unexpressed.
• Can be obvious or problematic.

Valid Argument

• An argument where the conclusion logically follows from the premises.
• If it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.
• Example: Premise: "Either Elizabeth owns a Honda or she owns a Saturn." Premise: "Elizabeth does not own a Honda." Conclusion: "Therefore, Elizabeth owns a Saturn."
• The argument is not sound if one of its premises is untrue.
• Example: Premise: "All flightless birds are man-eaters." Premise: "The penguin is a flightless bird." Conclusion: "Therefore, the penguin is a man-eater."