Rhetoric Vocabulary

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Style

Back 1

The distinctive quality of speech or writing and arrangement of words and figures of speech. Example: Daniel Defoe used run-on sentences in Robinson Crusoe. Style also includes sentence length and variety.

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Tone

Back 2

The speaker's attitude toward the subject or audience. Example: It was a dark and stormy night, denotes a scary tone. Example: animated, humble, incredulous, and whimsical.

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ColloquialismsDic

Back 3

Informal or conversational use of language. Example: y'all, pop, soda, bags, sacks, bubbler, kicked the bucket, the big enchilada.

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Diction

Back 4

Choice of words. Example: luminous glow verses beaming light

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Syntax

Back 5

Arrangement or words. Example: subject/predicate or inverted sentence order

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Active Voice

Back 6

Example: Marla mailed her letter.

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Passive Voice

Back 7

The letter was mailed by Marla.

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Trope

Back 8

Artful diction; the use of language in a non literal way; also called a figure of speech. A trope could be metaphors, similes, personification, or hyperboles.

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Metaphor

Back 9

A figure of speech or trope through which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else, thus making a comparison. Example: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Shakespeare

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Simile

Back 10

A figure of speech that uses "like" or "as" to compare two things. Example: "Life is like a box of chocolates." Forest Gump

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Personification

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Assigning lifelike qualities to inanimate objects or ideas. The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky.

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Hyperbole

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Exaggeration. Example: You could have knocked me over with a feather.

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Scheme

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An artful syntax(arrangement of words)

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Parallelism

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The repetition of similar grammatical or syntactical patterns. Example: I like to eat rich desserts, to play fast card games and to solve difficult riddles.

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JuxtapositionAnti

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Placement and alignment of two things side by side to emphasize comparisons or contrasts. Example: We are the heirs of that first revolutionary the word go forth... That the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans- born in this country.

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Antithesis

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Opposition, or contrast, of ideas or words in balanced or parallel construction. Example: We shall support any friend, oppose any foe.

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Paradox

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A contradictory statement. Example: Don't go near the water until you've learned how to swim.

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Understatement

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A writer deliberately makes a situation less than it is. Example: "I have to have this operation. It's not very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on my brain" The catcher in the Rye

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Anaphora

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Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines. Example: "Not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need-not as a call to battle, though arms we need- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are."

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Oxymoron

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Paradoxical juxtaposition or words that seem to contradict one another. Example: peaceful revolution, a just war. American English, awful pretty, jumbo shrimp.

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Rhetorical Question

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A question posed for rhetorical effect rather than for the purpose of getting an answer. Example: Will you join me in the historical?

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Cumulative Sentence

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Sentence that completes the main idea at the beginning of the sentence, and then builds and adds on. Example: "He dipped his hand in the bichloride solution and shook them- a quick shake, fingers down, like the fingers of a pianist above the keys." Sinclair Lewis.

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Hortative Sentence

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Sentence that exhorts, advises, calls to action. Example: "Let's both sides explore what problems unite us instead of those problems with divide us."

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Periodic Sentence

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Sentence whose main clause is withheld until the end. Example: "In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Pual." Frank Herbert

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Alliteration

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Repetition of the same sound beginning several words in sequence. Example: Let us go forth to lead the land we love.

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Inversion

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Inverted order of words in a sentence (variation of the subject-verb-object order) Example: United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do.