List 1: Rhetorical Terms

1. Rhetorical Strategies: The techniques speakers use to influence an audience. (The rhetorical effects and rhetorical choices at work in a rhetorical situation)

2. Rhetorical Situation: The context surrounding a text, including who the speaker is, what the subject is, who the audience is, and the relationship among these three elements. It also includes the author’s purpose, and the occasion that has prompted the text. 

3. Speaker: The person or group who creates a text. This might be a politician who delivers a speech, a commentator who writes an article, an artist who draws a political cartoon, or even a company that commissions an advertisement.

4. Occasion: The time and place a text is created or delivered. 

5. Audience: The listener, viewer, or reader of a text. Most texts are likely to have multiple audiences—a primary audience and a secondary audience

6. Purpose: The goal the speaker wants to achieve. 

7. Subject: The topic of the text. What the text is about. 

8. Rhetorical Effects: The effects and/or effectiveness of rhetorical strategies on an audience. (Message, Appeals—ethos, logos, pathos, and Tone)

9. Message: This is the speaker’s main idea. Another way of thinking about this is the speaker’s argument/claim. A message is what the speaker wants you to “walk away” with.

10. Ethos: Greek for “character.” Speakers appeal to ethos to demonstrate they are credible and trustworthy to speak on a given topic. Ethos is established by both who you are and what you say. 

11. Logos: Greek for “embodied thought.” Speakers appeal to logos, or reason, by offering clear, rational ideas and using specific details, examples, facts, statistics, or expert testimony to back them up. 

12. Pathos: Greek for “suffering” or “experience.” Speakers appeal to pathos to emotionally motivate their audience. More specific appeals to pathos might play on the audience’s values, desires, and hopes, on the one hand, or fears and prejudices, on the other. 

13. Tone: A speaker’s attitude toward the subject as conveyed by the speaker’s stylistic and rhetorical choices 

14. Rhetorical Choices: Choices a writer or speaker makes to forge a message. 

(ODDSIFL: Organization, Diction, Details, Syntax, Imagery, Figurative Language)

15. Organization: The structural choices an author makes in the organization of a text. This could be seen with the arrangement of chapters, discrete sections/parts, and sometimes how an argument is layered or how/when information is conveyed.

16. Diction: A speaker’s choice of words. Analysis of diction looks at these choices and what they add to the speaker’s message. 

17. Details: Details can include examples, descriptions, or narratives (the stories told).

18. Syntax: The arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences. This includes word order (subject-verb-object, for instance, or inverted structure); the length and structure of sentences (simple, compound, etc.); and such devices as parallelism and juxtaposition.

19. Imagery: A description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds. Imagery may use literal or figurative language to appeal to the senses. 

20. Figurative Language: A setting, an object, or an event in a story that carries more than literal meaning and therefore represents something significant to understanding the meaning of a work of literature. 

21. Metaphor: Figures of speech that compare two things without using like or as.

22. Allusion: Brief reference to a person, an event, a place (real or fictitious), or to a work of art. 

23. Simile: Figures of speech that compare two things by using like or as.

24. Personification: A figure of speech that applies human qualities to nonhuman things. 

List 1: Grammar Terms

25. Noun: A word used to name a person, place, thing, or idea.

26. Pronoun: A word used in place of a noun to avoid repetition.

27. Adjective: A word used to describe a noun or pronoun.

28. Verb: An action, state, or occurrence word; an essential part of a clause or sentence.

29. Adverb: A word used to modify a verb, adjective, or another adverb.

30. Preposition: A word used to show relationships between nouns or pronouns.

31. Article: A word used to indicate whether a noun is definite or indefinite (e.g., "a," "an," "the").

32. Conjunction: A word used to connect words, phrases, or clauses.

33. Coordinating conjunctions: A word that connects words, phrases, or clauses of equal importance (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)

34. Subordinating Conjunctions: A connecting word that makes a clause dependent, or unable to stand alone (after, although, because, before, if, even if, since, unless, until, when, while). 

35. Verbals: Words that are made of verb forms but do not function as verbs. 

36. Gerund: A verbal ending in "-ing" that functions as a noun.

37. Infinitive: A verbal that usually begins with "to" and can function as a noun, adjective, or adverb.

38. Participle: A verbal that can function as an adjective.

39. Phrase: A group of words that lacks a subject, a verb, or both. 

40. Clause: A group of words that include a subject and a verb. 

41. Independent Clause: A clause that includes a subject and a verb; a clause that does not include a subordinating conjunction. 

42. Dependent Clause (also called a Subordinate Clause): A clause that includes a subordinating conjunction; a clause that cannot stand alone. 

43. Relative Clause: A dependent clause that begins with a relative pronoun (e.g., "who," "which," "that").

44. Subject: The noun or pronoun that performs the action of the verb in a clause. 

45. Predicate: The part of the sentence that tells what the subject does or is.

46. Object: A noun or pronoun that receives the action of a verb.

47. Simple Sentence: A sentence with one independent clause.

48. Compound Sentence: A sentence with two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction.

49. Complex Sentence: A sentence with one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses.

Compound-Complex Sentence: A sentence with two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses.