forked from eggy/eifueo
4.5 KiB
4.5 KiB
Grade 11 HL English
The course code for this page is ENG3UZ.
Literary Techniques/Devices
Description
- Allusion: A brief and indirect reference to a thing or idea of
significance.
- e.g., “Look at Einstein over there, thinking he’s so smart.”
- Anecdote: A short and interesting story or event used to support a
point.
- e.g., “You should all be grateful! When I was a young lad, we didn’t have these fancy phones! We had to talk* to people’s *faces!”
- Hyperbole: An exaggeration for the purpose of emphasis.
- e.g., “If you null pointer me one more time I am going to crush you into two billion pieces!”
- Imagery: The usage of figurative language to describe concepts in a
way that invokes the senses.
- e.g., “My mother…how sweet and juicy her tender limbs are.”
- Metaphor: An implicit comparison between two unlike things without
the use of “like” or “as”.
- e.g., “My computer is an absolute potato.”
- Simile: An explicit comparison between two unlike things
with the use of “like” or “as”.
- e.g., “She’s as stupid as an elephant!”
- Litotes: An understatement by negating a positive or negative
expression.
- e.g., “My marks aren’t the best in the world.”
- Personification: The application of human concepts to non-humans,
such as human-like speech. This is a common example of a metaphor.
- e.g., The rock blinked at me with a cute face unlike any other I had seen before. “…Owo. Uwu?”
- Adjectives and adverbs: Words that describe and modify nouns and
verbs, respectively.
- e.g., The traitorous man died painfully.
Sound
- Alliteration: A number of words with the same beginning consonant
sound that appear close together in sequence.
- e.g., The dancing damsel dazzled the crowd.
- Assonance: A repetition of similar vowel sounds in words close to
each other in a sentence.
- e.g., “Oh, please let her go.”
- Dialect: A regional variety of language with spelling, grammar, and
pronunciation that differentiates a population from others around them.
- e.g., “There’s five of them dirty ducks flappin’ out and about, sir!”
- Euphony: The use of words and phrases that are pleasing to the ear
by using long vowel sounds, harmonious constants (l, m, n, r, f, v), and
soft consonants or semi-vowels (w, s, y, th, wh).
- e.g., “The velvet…it’s so lovely, and so very soft…”
- Onomatopoeia: A word which imitates a sound effect.
- e.g., The cat meowed as he looked on with adoring eyes that tore through my squealing heart.
- Pun: A play on words that involve words with similar sounds but
different meanings.
- e.g., “Lettuce finish our salads.”
- Repetition: Using a phrase for emphasis multiple times within close
proximity.
- e.g., “I was too late. I was far too late. My dog…she tried her best.”
- Rhyme: A repetition of words whose end syllables sound similar.
- e.g., Roses are red / Violets are blue / Your family is dead / And you will be too
- Rhyme scheme: The rhyming pattern or structure at the end of each
line of poetry.
- e.g., the above poem uses ABAB as its rhyme scheme.
- Rhythm: The usage of stressed and unstressed syllables to
demonstrate patterns, especially in verses.
- Anapest: Three syllables, in which the first two are unstressed
while the last is stressed.
- e.g., “’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house“
- Dactyl: Three syllables, in which the first is stressed while the
rest are unstressed.
- e.g., “Marvelous!”
- Iamb: Two syllables, in which the first is unstressed while the
second is stressed.
- e.g., “You stupid idiot.”
- Spondee: Two syllables, both of which are stressed.
- e.g., “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Dylan Thomas)
- Trochee: Two syllables, in which the first is stressed while the
second is unstressed.
- e.g., Double, double, toil and trouble (William Shakespeare)
- Anapest: Three syllables, in which the first two are unstressed
while the last is stressed.
Organisation and Pace
- Blank verse:
- Enjambment:
- Caesura:
- Form:
- Ballad:
- Concrete poem:
- Couplet:
- Dirge:
- Dramatic monologue:
- Lyric:
- Ode:
- Quatrain:
- Sonnet:
- Free verse:
- Genre:
- Line:
- Meter:
- Stanza:
- Sentence types:
- Sentence lengths:
- Syntax:
- Dialogue vs. narrative:
Meaning
- Abstract language:
- Allegory:
- Ambiguity:
- Colloquialism:
- Concrete language:
- Connotation:
- Contrast/Juxtaposition:
- Denotation:
- Diction:
- Epigram:
- Irony:
- Jargon:
- Motif:
- Oxymoron:
- Paradox:
- Pathetic fallacy:
- Symbol:
- Tone:
- Theme: