anecdote - A brief narrative offered in a text to capture the audience's attention or to support a generalization of claim. Ex: "A good man, gray on the edges, an assistant manager in a brown starched and ironed uniform, is washing the glass windows of the store...good night, m'ijo! he tells a young boy coming out after playing the video game..." (Dagoberto Gilb) compound sentence - A sentence with two or more independent clauses. Ex: Canada is a rich country, but it still has many poor people. conclusion (of syllogism) - The ultimate point or generalization that a syllogism expresses. Ex: All mortals die. All men are mortals. All men die. understand"(fitzgerald 87). understand"(fitzgerald 87). point of view - The perspective or source of a piece of writing. A first-person point of view has a narrator or speaker who refers to himself or herself as "I." A third-person point of view lacks "I" in perspective. Ex: The Great Gatsby is written in first-person point of view. rhetorical choices - The particular choices a writer or speaker makes to achieve meaning, purpose, or effect. Ex: F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby chooses to use imagery, similes, and metaphors often assonance - The repetition of vowel sounds in the stressed syllables of two or more adjacent words.
Ex: "Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies" (John Keats) assumption - An opinion, a perspective, or a belief that a writer or speaker thinks the audience holds. Ex: "We think a problem is weakness, mental laziness, intellectual inflation, but an issue is deep-rooted, interior, and personal." (Allison Amend) complex sentence - A sentence with one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. Ex: As long as it isn't cold, it doesn't matter if it rains. compound-complex sentence - A sentence with two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses. Ex: The package arrived in the morning, but the courier left before I could check the contents. context - The convergence of time, place, audience, and motivating factors in which a piece of writing or a speech is situated. Ex: Kate Chopin lived in the late 1800s in Southern America as a feminist. This background formed the foundation of The Awakening. Ex: "If war is the cause of our misery, peace is the way to promote our happiness." denotation - The "dictionary definition" of a word, in contrast to its connotation, or implied meaning. Ex: A house is literally a dwelling usually for a family. extended analogy - An extended passage arguing that if two things are similar in one or two ways, they are probably similar in other ways as well. Ex: In "Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts," Catton argues some similarities between Grant and Lee. extended example - An example that is carriedimagery - Language that evokes particular sensations or emotionally rich experiences in a reader. Ex 1: Edgar Allan Poe uses imagery in The Fall of the House of the Usher. Ex 2: " ran for a huge black knotted trees whose massed leaves made a fabric against the rain " (Fitzgerald 93). implied metaphor - A metaphor embedded in a sentence rather than expressed directly as a sentence. Ex 1: "John swelled and rustled his plumage." (John was a peacock.) Ex 2: "Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart" (Fitzgerald 25). inductive reasoning - Reasoning the begins by citing a number of specific instances or examples and then shows how collectively they constitute a general principle. Ex: This ice is cold. Thus, all ice is cold. intention - The goal a writer or speaker hopes to achievenarrative - An anecdote or a story offered in support of a generalization, claim, or point. Also, a function in texts accomplished when the speaker or writer tells a story. Ex: "A good man, gray on the edges, an assistant manager in a brown starched and ironed uniform, is washing the glass windows of the store...good night, m'ijo! he tells a young boy coming out after playing the video game..." (Dagoberto Gilb) omniscient narration - A narrative in which the reader or viewer has access to the unspoken thoughts of all the characters.
Ex: Our Town by Thornton Wilder. parable - A usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle. Ex: Ignacy Krasicki's "The Blind Man and the Lame." paradox - A statement that seems untrue on the surface but is true nevertheless. Ex: "Not having a fashion is a fashion." Prose-anything in writing not poetry personification - The giving of human characteristics to inanimate objects. Ex: The fall season has been personified as "sitting on a granary floor" (Keats). repetition - In a text, repeated use of sounds, words, phrases, or clauses to emphasize meaning or achieve effect. Ex 1: The dog ran, the dog jumped, and the dog whimpered. Ex 2:"'Hot!' said the conductor to familiar faces. 'Some Weather! Hot! Hot! Hot! Is it hot enough '" (Fitzgerald 121). rhetoric - The art of analyzing all the choices involving language that a writer, speaker, reader, or listener might make in a situation so that the text becomes meaningful, purposeful, and effective; the specific features of texts, written or spoken, that cause them to be meaningful, purposeful, and effective for readers or listeners in a situation. Ex: Diction, scheme, trope, argument, and syntax. rhetorical intention - Involvement and investment in and ownership of a piece of writing. Ex: F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby has rhetorical intention. rhetorical question - A question posed by the speaker or writer not to seek an answer but instead to affirm or deny a point simply by asking a question about it. Ex: "Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?" (Shakespeare). rhetorical situation - The convergence in a situation of exigency (the need to write), audience, and purpose. Ex: Before drafting my research paper, I had to analyze my purpose and how much background information to provide for my audience. rhetorical triangle - A diagram showing the relations of writer or speaker, reader or listener, and text in a rhetorical situation. subordinate clause - A group of words that includes a subject and verb but that cannot stand on its own as a sentence; also called dependent clause. Ex: After the dog slept, the dog ran apostrophe - The direct address of an absent person or personified object as if he/she/it is able to reply.im? I can answer in one word. It is victory." (Winston Churchill) compound sentence - A sentence with two or more independent clauses. Ex: Canada is a rich country, but it still has many poor people.
understand"(fitzgerald 87). rhetorical choices - The particular choices a writer or speaker makes to achieve meaning, purpose, or effect. Ex: F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby choose canon - One of the traditional elements of rhetorical composition -- invention, arrangement, style, memory, or delivery. Ex: Frederick Douglass's style (one aspect of canon) is both objective and subjective. Antecedent metonymy - An entity referred to by one of its attributes or associations. Ex: "The press" for the news media. symbol - In a text, an element that stands for more than itself and, therefore, helps to convey a theme of the text. Ex: Purple symbolizes royalty. onomatopoeia - A literary device in which the sound of a word is related to its meaning. allegory - An extended metaphor. Ex 1: "During the time I have voyaged on this ship, I have avoided the cabin; rather, I have remained on deck, battered by wind and rain, but able to see moonlight " Ex 2: "This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take forms of houses and...of men..." (Fitzgerald 27). allusion - A reference in a written or spoken text to another text or to some particular body of knowledge. Ex 1: "I doubt if Phaethon feared more -- that time/ he dropped the sun-reins of his father's chariot/ and burned the streak of sky we see today" (Dante's Inferno). Ex 2: "Have you read 'The rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard loose sentence - A sentence that adds modifying elements after the subject, verb, and complement. Ex: "Bells rang, filling the air with their clangor, startling pigeons into flight from every belfry, bringing people into the streets to hear the news." metaphor - An implied comparison that does not use the word like or as. Ex: "No man is an island" (Donne). oxymoron - Juxtaposed words with seemingly contradictory meanings. Ex: "O miserable abundance! O beggarly simile - A type of comparison that uses the word like or as. Ex: "There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away" (Fitzgerald 2)
syllogism - Logical reasoning from inarguable premises. Ex: All mortals die. All humans are mortal. All humans die. synecdoche - A part of something used to refer to the whole. Ex: "The hired hands are not doing their jobs." syntax - The order of words in a sentence. Ex: "The dog ran" not "The ran dog." theme - The message conveyed by a literary work. Ex: The decline of the American dream in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. tone - The writer's or speaker's attitude toward the subject matter. Ex: Light-hearted in the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. understatement - Deliberate playing down of a situation in order to make a point. Ex: "I think there's a problem between Shias and Sunnis." unity - The sense that a text is, appropriately, about only one subject and achieves one major purpose or effect. Ex: Pride by Dagoberto Gilb unreliable narrator - An untrustworthy or naïve commentator on events and characters in a story. Ex: The people at Gatsby's parties like Jordan who spread rumors about Gatsby's past in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. verisimilitude - The quality of a text that reflects the truth of actual experience. Ex: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon has medium verisimilitude.