Rhetoric
An appeal to logic or reasoning
Logos
Diction
Selection of individual words
A grammatical unit that contains both a subject and a verb. (NOT A SENTENCE)
Clause
Analogy
A comparison of one pair of variables to a parallel set of variables
“The tired old truck groaned as it inched up the hill.”
Personification
An appeal to emotions
Pathos
Juxtaposition
Normally unassociated ideas/phrases/words are placed next to each other.
Cannot stand alone as a sentence and must be accompanied by an independent clause.
Dependent, or subordinate clause
Metonymy
Replacing an actual word or idea, with a related word or concept
Who do you think you are?
Rhetorical Question
The relationship between the author, the audience, the text/message, and the context
Rhetorical Triangle
Parallelism
Grammatical/structural similarity between parts of a sentence, phrases, etc. Elements of equal importance are equally developed.
A sentence with an AB-BA structure (Ex: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” )
Chiasmus
A common, often used expression that doesn’t make sense if you take it literally. Ex: "Get off my back!"
Idiom
"Wise Fool", "Eloquent Silence", "Jumbo Shrimp"
Oxymoron
Appeal to the speaker's credibility
Ethos
Anastrophe
Inversion of the normal syntactical order of words.
"glistens the dew upon the grass."
A word or group of words placed beside a noun or noun substitute to supplement its meaning
Appositive
It is a stylistic device in which a number of words, having the same first consonant sound, occur close together in a series.
Alliteration
DC traffic is kind of annoying.
Understatement
The man who created the three appeals
Aristotle
When a writer creates a list of items which are all separated by conjunctions
Polysyndeton
A specific type of parallelism/parallel structure where there are three main clauses
Tricolon/Triadic Sentence
A description involving a “crossing of the senses.” Example: “A purplish scent filled the room.”
Synesthesia
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
Antithesis