| A | B |
|---|
| Alliteration | The repetition of an initial consonant sound. |
| Allusion | A brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or event--real or fictional. |
| Ambiguity | The presence of two or more possible meanings in any passage. |
| Analogy | Reasoning or arguing from parallel cases. |
| Anaphora | The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses. |
| Antithesis | The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases. |
| Aphorism | (1) A tersely phrased statement of a truth or opinion. (2) A brief statement of a principle. |
| Apostrophe | A rhetorical term for breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing |
| Appeal to Authority | A fallacy in which a speaker or writer seeks to persuade not by giving evidence but by appealing to the respect people have for a famous person or institution. |
| Appeal to Ignorance | A fallacy that uses an opponent's inability to disprove a conclusion as proof of the conclusion's correctness. |
| Argument | A course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or falsehood. |
| Assonance | The identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words. |
| Asyndeton | The omission of conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses (opposite of polysyndeton). |
| Character | An individual (usually a person) in a narrative (usually a work of fiction or creative nonfiction). |
| Chiasmus | A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed. |
| Circular Argument | An argument that commits the logical fallacy of assuming what it is attempting to prove. |
| Claim | An arguable statement, which may be a claim of fact, value, or policy. |
| Clause | A group of words that contains a subject and a predicate |
| Climax | Mounting by degrees through words or sentences of increasing weight and in parallel construction with an emphasis on the high point or culmination of a series of events. |
| Colloquial | Characteristic of writing that seeks the effect of informal spoken language as distinct from formal or literary English. |
| Comparison | A rhetorical strategy in which a writer examines similarities and/or differences between two people, places, ideas, or objects. |
| Complement | A word or word group that completes the predicate in a sentence. |
| Concession | An argumentative strategy by which a speaker or writer acknowledges the validity of an opponent's point. |
| Confirmation | The main part of a text in which logical arguments in support of a position are elaborated. |
| Conjunction | The part of speech (or word class) that serves to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences. |
| Connotation | The emotional implications and associations that a word may carry. |
| Coordination | The grammatical connection of two or more ideas to give them equal emphasis and importance. Contrast with subordination. |
| Deduction | A method of reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the stated premises. |
| Denotation | The direct or dictionary meaning of a word, in contrast to its figurative or associated meanings. |
| Dialect | A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, and/or vocabulary. |
| Diction | (1) The choice and use of words in speech or writing. (2) A way of speaking, usually assessed in terms of prevailing standards of pronunciation and elocution. |
| Didactic | Intended or inclined to teach or instruct, often excessively |
| Encomium | A tribute or eulogy in prose or verse glorifying people, objects, ideas, or events |
| Ephiphora | The repetition of a word or phrase at the end of several clauses. (Also known as epistrophe.) |
| Epitaph | (1) A short inscription in prose or verse on a tombstone or monument. (2) A statement or speech commemorating someone who has died: a funeral oration. |
| Ethos | A persuasive appeal based on the projected character of the speaker or narrator. |
| Eulogy | A formal expression of praise for someone who has recently died. |
| Euphemism | The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit. |
| Exposition | A statement or type of composition intended to give information about (or an explanation of) an issue, subject, method, or idea. |
| Extended Metaphor | A comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem. |
| Fallacy | An error in reasoning that renders an argument invalid. |
| False Dilemma | A fallacy of oversimplification that offers a limited number of options (usually two) when in fact more options are available. |
| Figurative Language | The various uses of language that depart from customary construction, order, or significance. |
| Flashback | A shift in a narrative to an earlier event that interrupts the normal chronological development of a story. |
| Genre | A category of artistic composition, as in film or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content. |
| Hasty Generalization | A fallacy in which a conclusion is not logically justified by sufficient or unbiased evidence. |
| Hyperbole | A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect; an extravagant statement. |
| Imagery | Vivid descriptive language that appeals to one or more of the senses |
| Jargon | The specialized language of a professional, occupational, or other group, often meaningless to outsiders. |
| Induction | A method of reasoning by which a rhetor collects a number of instances and forms a generalization that is meant to apply to all instances. |
| Invective | Denunciatory or abusive language; discourse that casts blame on somebody or something. |
| Irony | The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is directly contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea. |
| Isocolon | A succession of phrases of approximately equal length and corresponding structure. |
| Ad Hominem | An argument based on the failings of an adversary rather than on the merits of the case; a logical fallacy that involves a personal attack. |
| Adjective | The part of speech (or word class) that modifies a noun or a pronoun. |
| Adverb | The part of speech (or word class) that modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb. |
| Allegory | Extending a metaphor so that objects, persons, and actions in a text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text. |
| Litotes | A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite. |
| Loose Sentence | A sentence structure in which a main clause is followed by subordinate phrases and clauses. Contrast with periodic sentence. |
| Metaphor | A figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something important in common. |
| Metonymy | A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated (such as "crown" for "royalty"). |
| Mode of Discourse | The way in which information is presented in a text. The four traditional modes are narration, description, exposition, and argument. |
| Mood | (1) The quality of a verb that conveys the writer's attitude toward a subject. (2) The emotion evoked by a text. |
| Narrative | A rhetorical strategy that recounts a sequence of events, usually in chronological order. |
| Noun | The part of speech (or word class) that is used to name a person, place, thing, quality, or action. |
| Onomatopoeia | The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to |
| Oxymoron | A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side. |
| Paradox | A statement that appears to contradict itself. |
| Parallelism | The similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses. |
| Parody | A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule. |
| Pathos | The means of persuasion that appeals to the audience's emotions. |
| Periodic Sentence | A long and frequently involved sentence, marked by suspended syntax, in which the sense is not completed until the final word--usually with an emphatic climax. |
| Personification | A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities. |
| Point of View | The perspective from which a speaker or writer tells a story or presents information. |
| Predicate | One of the two main parts of a sentence or clause, modifying the subject and including the verb, objects, or phrases governed by the verb. |
| Pronoun | A word (a part of speech or word class) that takes the place of a noun. |
| Prose | Ordinary writing (both fiction and nonfiction) as distinguished from verse. |
| Refutation | The part of an argument wherein a speaker or writer anticipates and counters opposing points of view. |
| Repetition | An instance of using a word, phrase, or clause more than once in a short passage--dwelling on a point. |
| Rhetoric | The study and practice of effective communication. |
| Rhetorical Question | A question asked merely for effect with no answer expected. |
| Running Style | Sentence style that appears to follow the mind as it worries a problem through, mimicking the "rambling, associative syntax of conversation"--the opposite of periodic sentence style. |
| Sarcasm | A mocking, often ironic or satirical remark. |
| Satire | A text or performance that uses irony, derision, or wit to expose or attack human vice, foolishness, or stupidity. |
| Simile | A figure of speech in which two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared, usually in a phrase introduced by "like" or "as." |
| Style | Narrowly interpreted as those figures that ornament speech or writing; broadly, as representing a manifestation of the person speaking or writing. |
| Subject | The part of a sentence or clause that indicates what it is about. |
| Syllogism | A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. |
| subordination | Words, phrases, and clauses that make one element of a sentence dependent on (or subordinate to) another. Contrast with coordination. |
| Symbol | A person, place, action, or thing that (by association, resemblance, or convention) represents something other than itself. |
| Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole or the whole for a part. |
| Syntax | (1) The study of the rules that govern the way words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. (2) The arrangement of words in a sentence. |
| Thesis | he main idea of an essay or report, often written as a single declarative sentence. |
| Tone | A writer's attitude toward the subject and audience. Tone is primarily conveyed through diction, point of view, syntax, and level of formality. |
| Transition | The connection between two parts of a piece of writing, contributing to coherence. |
| Understatement | A figure of speech in which a writer deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is. |
| Verb | The part of speech (or word class) that describes an action or occurrence or indicates a state of being. |
| Voice | (1) The quality of a verb that indicates whether its subject acts (active voice) or is acted upon (passive voice). (2) The distinctive style or manner of expression of an author or narrator. |
| Zeugma | The use of a word to modify or govern two or more words although its use may be grammatically or logically correct with only one. |
| Antecedent | The noun or noun phrase referred to by a pronoun. |
