Simile: a figure of
speech comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of a specific
word of comparison.
Ex. She’s as pretty as
a sunflower.
Soliloquy: an extended
speech, usually in a drama, delivered by a character alone on stage.
Ex. To be or not to be
Spiritual: a folk song,
usually on a religious theme.
Speaker: a narrator,
the one speaking.
Ex. Holden in The Catcher
in the Rye
Stereotype: cliché; a
simplified, standardized conception with a special meaning and appeal for
members of a group; a formula story.
Ex. Jocks are stereotyped
as not smart.
Stream of
Consciousness: the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow
of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images,
as the character experiences them.
ex: Essays of Montaigne
Structure: the planned framework of a
literary selection; its apparent organization.
Style: the manner of putting thoughts into words; a
characteristic way of writing or speaking.
ex: formal syle
Subordination: the
couching of less important ideas in less important structures of language.
Surrealism: a style in
literature and painting that stresses the subconscious or the nonrational
aspects of man’s existence characterized by the juxtaposition of the bizarre
and the banal.
Suspension of
Disbelief: suspend not believing in order to enjoy it.
ex: People watch Harry Potter even though they
know magic isn’t real.
Symbol: something which
stands for something else, yet has a meaning of its own.
ex: The green lantern is a symbol of hope in
The Great Gatsby.
Synesthesia: the use of
one sense to convey the experience of another sense.
ex: a "soft smell”
Synecdoche: another
form of name changing, in which a part stands for the whole.
ex: Counting heads can mean counting people
Syntax: the arrangement
and grammatical relations of words in a sentence.
Theme: main idea of the story; its message(s).
Thesis: a proposition
for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved or disproved; the
main idea.
ex: I typically have my thesis in the first
paragraph.
Tone: the devices used
to create the mood and atmosphere of a literary work; the author’s perceived
point of view.
ex: anxious, exciting, dreary
Tongue in Cheek: a type
of humor in which the speaker feigns seriousness; a.k.a. “dry” or “dead pan”
ex: my sense of humor
Tragedy: in literature:
any composition with a somber theme carried to a disastrous conclusion; a fatal
event; protagonist usually is heroic but tragically (fatally) flawed
Understatement:
opposite of hyperbole; saying less than you mean for emphasis
ex: She did one assignment her whole high
school career.
Vernacular: everyday
speech
Voice: The textual features, such as diction and
sentence structures, that convey a writer’s or speaker’s pesona.
Zeitgeist: the feeling
of a particular era in history
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