AP Lang Summer Vocab

Abstract Language: Language describing ideas and qualities

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.

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

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.

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

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

Antecedent: the word to which a pronoun refers.

Antithesis: A contrast in language to bring out a contrast in ideas. 

Aphorism: A concise or tersely phrased statement in principle, truth, or opinion. Often found in fields like law, politics, and art

Bias: a predisposition or subjective opinion. 

Call to action: Writing that urges readers to action or promote a change.

Claim of Definition: claims arguing for what something means (or doesn’t mean).

Claim of Policy: claims advocating courses of action that should or should not be undertaken.

Claim of Value: Claims involving opinions, attitudes, and subjective evaluation.

Cliche: A timeworn expression that through overuse has lost its power to evoke concrete images.

Colloquialism: words characteristic to informal, slang-ish, or familiar conversation.

Concrete Language: Language describing observable, specific things. 

Connotation: The emotional implications that a word may carry

Denotation: specific, exact meaning of a word as defined.

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

Ethos: appealing to the audience's shared values.

Euphemism: Substitutions of an inoffensive, indirect, or agreeable expression for a word or phrase perceived as socially unacceptable or harsh.

Generalization: When a writer bases a claim upon an isolated example or asserts that a claim is certain rather than probable.

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

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

Juxtaposition: Placing two ideas side by side or close together.

Logos: Appealing to logical reasoning and sound evidence.

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

Motif: recurrent images, words, objects, phrases, or actions that tend to unify the work. 

Oxymoron: a self contradictory combination of words.

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.

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

Parody: exaggerated imitation of a serious work or subject.

Pathos: Evoking and manipulating emotions

Persona: the character that the speaker portrays. 

Refutation: When a writer delivers relevant opposing arguments.

Repetition: A thing repeated for rhetorical or literary effect.

Rhetorical Question: A question asked solely to produce an effect and not to elicit a reply. 

Satire: genre of writing used to critique or ridicule through humor or sarcasm.

Sentence Types:

1. Declarative Sentence: makes a statement 

2. Interrogative Sentence: asks a question 

3. Imperative sentence: gives a command 

4. Exclamatory sentence: makes an interjection

Syntax: how a sentence is constructed; the phrasing and grammar of a sentence.

Thesis: The central claim and overall purpose of a work.

Tone: the voice and attitude the writer has chosen to project. 

Qualifier: a statement that indicates the force of the argument.