English Terms

Rhetorical devices - Specific writing techniques that can be used to achieve certain effects

Schemes - Devices that rely on arranging the words in sentences in a particular way or pattern (change the order)

Repetition of exact word or phrase

Anaphora - (beginning repetition of word or phrase)

• Our class has worked on school spirit for four years—four years of pep rallies, four years of cookie sales, four years of cheering ourselves hoarse.

Anadiplosis - (repetition of a word/phrase that ends one clause at the beginning of the next)

• My dream to find true silence, silence that allows me real thought, thought that would lead to the truth.

Epistrophe - (end repetition)

• When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.

2. Repetition of grammatical structures (parallelism)

Parallelism - (repetition of grammatical structure)

• Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty

Tricolon - (triple parallels, Tricolon can show sincerity, provide emphasis, or indicate pretentiousness.)

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I will learn.

Climax (arranging parallel structures in order of ascending importance)

3. Altered repetition of grammatical structures

Antithesis - (similar structures giving opposite ideas)

• The prodigal robs his heir; the miser robs himself.

Antimetabole - (similar structure with words/phrases reversed in position)

• When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Chiasmus - (complete or almost complete reversal of parallel structures)

•  By day the frolic, and the dance by night. 

• Naked I rose from the earth; to the grave I fall clothed. (I and fall would be reversed in a complete reversal, but this is close)

4. Alterations to normal structure or rules

Anastrophe (reversing the normal order of words in a sentence)

• The helmsman steered; the ship moved on; yet never a breeze up blew.

Asyndeton - (lack of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words)

• We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardships, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Metaplasmus - (misspelling or altering a word to create a rhetorical effect) 

• Austin Powers renders all things shagedelic.

• Dog →  dawg (emphasize speech pattern)

• prince → princeling (adding -let or -ling to put down or diminish)

• The Greek god Hermes →  Hermenator (modernizing a word/name)

5. Repetition of sounds

Consonance - (repeating consonant sounds in words in close proximity)

• All’s well that ends well.

Alliteration - (repeating the initial sound in words in close proximity)

• The silent slip and slide of the water lulled him to sleep on the ship. (NOT the s in “ship,” which has a different sound - sh) - this is a special case of consonance

Assonance - (repeating vowel sounds in words in close proximity)

• The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Tropes - Devices that rely on using words in ways that alter their typical, literal meanings (change the meaning)

6. Comparisons

Metaphor - (direct comparison – X is Y)

Simile - (indirect comparison – X is like Y or X is as big as Y)

• My love is like a red, red rose.

Personification - (giving human characteristics to nonhuman things)

• America expects everyone to do his or her duty.

• Sunlight crept quietly across the sky, gently nudging each sleeper awake.

7. Contradictions

Oxymoron - (pairing of opposite words)

• Sophomore (“wise fool”)

• He felt a cold heat burning inside him.

• Can be used to make a point: military intelligence

Paradox - (seemingly contradictory but possibly true statement or situation)

• Less is more.

• Only laws can make us free.

8. Substitutions

Metonymy - (using a related word or phrase to stand in for something)

• The White House today released a public statement on the economy. – White House for the current president and his administration

Synecdoche - (using a part of something to represent the whole)

• All hands on deck! – hands for whole sailor

9. Over or under

Hyperbole - (exaggeration for effect)

• People moved slowly then. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.

• His yelling could split rocks.

Litotes - (understatement for effect that involves negation)

• Watching a pitcher hit the batter three times in a row: “His control is not exactly perfect.”

• The loss of all his hair from head to toe put a not-inconsiderable dent in his attraction to others.

10. Wordplay

Paronomasia/Pun - (wordplay using words similar in sound but different in meaning) 

• I used to be a tap dancer until I fell in the sink.

Zeugma - (using one word, usually a verb, to modify two different phrases)

• He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men. – carried modifies both strobe light and responsibility but in different meanings