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Rhetorical Strategies
Literary devices
AP English Literature Term List
AP ENGLISH GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS
100
refers to words that describe concepts rather than concrete images (ideas and qualities rather than observable or specific things, people, or places.)
What is Abstract diction?
100
specific language techniques which writers use to create text that is clear, interesting, and memorable.
What is Literary devices?
100
The use of the same or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables of several closely placed words that end with different consonant sounds.
What is Assonance?
100
the opposite of hyperbole
What is understatement?
200
an adverbial clause that has a nonfinite verb or no verb at all (the clause is missing “was” or “were” or it is replaced by a verbal, making it dependent).
What is Absolutes?
200
a reference in one story to a well-known character or event from another story, history, or place
What is Allusion?
200
Substituting a thing closely related to a word with the word itself.
What is Metonymy?
200
apparent contradiction.
What is oxymoron?
300
use of scholarly words or terms
What is Academic diction?
300
comparing one thing to another very different thing in order to explain it better.
What is Analogy?
300
A speech given when a character is alone, and meant to share with the reader or viewer what is happening in that character’s thoughts and feelings.
What is Soliloquy?
300
referring to something in terms of a closely-associated object.
What is metonomy?
400
a clause that has an adverb-like function in modifying another clause.
What is Adverbial Clause?
400
is when the reader knows things that the characters in a story do not.
What is Dramatic Irony?
400
A recurring word, phrase, image, object, or action that creates unity throughout a text and may also reinforce its theme.
What is Motif?
400
a form of literary social critique that depends on the use of irony.
What is SATIRE?
500
an extended narrative in prose or verse in which characters, events, and settings represent abstract qualities and in which the author intends a second meaning to be read beneath the surface of the story; the underlying meaning may be moral, religious, political, social, or satiric.
What is Allegory?
500
an outcome in a story where good is rewarded, and evil is punished.
What is Poetic Justice?
500
The rhythm is determined by the number of syllables in a line and the number and placement of accents in the line.
What is Meter?
500
the attitude an author conveys towards the subject matter he or she is writing about.
What is TONE?