Text Structure and Language
An extremely powerful way to characterize someone, which can reveal the social and specific region of any character. For example, the author in “Things Fall Apart” uses African languages to write a unique African tale.
What is Dialect?
Something that shows how two things are alike, but with the ultimate goal of making a point about this comparison. The purpose of an analogy is not merely to show, but also to explain.
What is Analogy?
A mark or character used as a conventional representation of an object, function, or process, e.g. the letter or letters standing for a chemical element or a character in musical notation. In the book, “A Man’s Search for Meaning”, a bird flew down and looked at one of the prisoners of the concentration camp, as a symbol that God was with him and his wife who is dead is watching over him.
What is Symbols?
A literary device that contradicts itself but contains a plausible kernel of truth: “This is the beginning of the end.”
What is Paradox?
An imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect. “The Hunger Pains” is a funny and great example of a parody that is made off of “The Hunger Games”
What is Parody?
The narrator states the character’s words or thought using verbs like “said” or “thought” or “read”.
What is Indirect Narration?
A figure of speech in which the characters, events or figures are described with abstract ideas and principles. In “Things Fall Apart”, Achebe the author described the white missionaries that arrived as a “locust swarm.”
What is Allegory?
Literary technique that consists of a repeated element that has symbolic significance to a literary work. For example, in “Othello”, the extensive use of Iago’s comparison of Othello to animals represents racism at the time.
What is Motifs?
Visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work. In Othello, “Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow” is a good example of imagery.
What is Imagery?
A work of literature that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other authors(not in a mocking way).
What is Pastiche?
The use of informal phrases or words in writing or speech. Examples that can be used in this literary technique are worlds like “Gonna” or “Ain’t”, or even “Ain’t Gonna”.
What is Colloquialism?
When two certain things are placed next to each other for comparison. For example, In “Things Fall Apart”, Okonkwo and his father are compared and explained side by side with one another throughout the novel as drastically different. His father was extremely lazy, and Okonkwo was represented as wanting to be the exact opposite.
What is Juxtaposition?
The literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests.
What is Denotation?
A figure of speech that helps represent something as less value than it actually is. In “A Man’s Search for Meaning”, the concentration camp prisoners who were mentally ok helped the prisoners by acting like the conditions were not bad and playing it down.
What is Understatement?
A figure of speech in which the speaker intends to be understood as meaning something that contrasts with the literal or usual meaning of what he says. In Shrek, Donkey asks Shrek if he can stay with him. Shrek replies, "Of course," when he really means, "No, not really."
What is Verbal Irony?
The choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing. This effectively helps the readers be able to convey the idea, a point of view, or story in general.
What is Diction?
A figure of speech (also a metaphor) that compares something using the words “like” or “as”. In one of his many soliloquies, Iago explains to the audience that one reason he intends to ruin Cassio's life is that he suspects Cassio has slept with Emilia, Iago's wife. This horrible thought, Iago tells us, 'Doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards'.
What is Simile?
A figure of speech that directly compares one thing to another for rhetorical effect. For example, in Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl compares life to a container that is empty at birth and must be filled with meaning and purpose as the individual progresses through life.
What is Metaphors?
Language to exaggerate what you mean or emphasize a point. It's often used to make something sound much bigger and better than it actually is or to make something sound much more dramatic. In the book “To Kill A Mockingbird”, an example of a hyperbole is in this quote; "A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County."
What is Hyperbole?
Occurs when the audience (of a movie, play, etc.) understands something about a character's actions or an event but the characters do not. In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, for example, the audience knows that Oedipus's acts are tragic mistakes long before he recognizes his own errors.
What is Dramatic Irony?
The set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order. One of the main ways a writer is able to convey meaning in his text.
What is Syntax?
The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form. In the book “A Man’s Search for Meaning”, the winds during the winter were described as “slapping” them in the face.
What is Personification?
A commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.
What is connotation?
A pair of statements or images in which the one reverses the other:"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong
What is Antithesis?
A literary technique in which an expected outcome does not happen, or its opposite happens instead.
What is Situational Irony?