Student guide

CONNOTATION DENOTATION

[kon-uh-tey-shuh n] An idea or meaning

suggested by or associated with a word or thing

A good example is the word "gold."  The connotations, however, are the ideas associated with gold, such as greed, luxury, or avarice. Writers use connotation to make their writing more vivid and interesting to read.

[dee-noh-tey-shuh n] Literal definition of a

word A good example is the

word "gold." The denotation of gold is a malleable, ductile, yellow element.

PEDANTIC SIMPLE [/puh-dan-tik] Characterized by a narrow,

often ostentatious concern for book learning and formal rules

Pedantic: “Though I employ so much of my time in writing to you, I confess I have often my doubts whether it is to any purpose. I know how unwelcome advice generally is; I know that those who want it most, like it and follow it least; and I know, too, that the advice of parents, more particularly, is ascribed to the moroseness, the imperiousness, or the garrulity of old age.” Lord Chesterfield, “Letter to His Son”

[sim-puh l] Simple: In a flash Buck

knew it. The time had come. It was to the death. As they circled about,

snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful for the advantage, the scenes came to Buck with a

sense of familiarity. Jack London’s Call of the Wild

  pure, easy, plain, basic

OVERSTATED UNDERSTATED

[oh-ver-steyt] Exaggerated

[uhn-der-steyt] expressed with restraint,

lack of emphasis In Shakespeare's

"Macbeth," Macbeth, having murdered his friend Banquo, understates the number of people who have been murdered since the beginning of time by saying "Blood hath been shed ere now."

MONOSYLLABIC POLYSYLLABIC

[mon-uh-si-lab-ik][pol-ee-si-lab-ik]One syllable Monosyllabic: Cats eat meat.

[pol-ee-si-lab-ik] Polysyllabic: Felines are

carnivorous mammals. More than one syllable.

EUPHONIOUS CACOPHONIC [yoo-foh-nee-uh s] Pleasing or agreeable to

the ear vs. discordant, unpleasant sounding, jarring.

“As when upon a tranced summer night/Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,/Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,/Dream, and so dream all night without a stir….” A euphonious excerpt from Keats’s Hyperion

[kuh-kof-uh-nic] “Dry clashed his harness

in the icy caves/And barren chasms, and all to left and right/The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based/His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang….” A cacophonic excerpt from Tennysons’ Morte D’Arthur

LITERAL FIGURATIVE

What you see vs. what you get from language, tone, symbol, etc.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost is a good example of a piece that can be interpreted literally or figuratively.

ACTIVE PASSIVE

[ak-tiv] Subject of the sentence

is performing or causing the action rather than a state of being

[pas-iv] subject is the object of

the action or the effect of the verb

The character is described as foolish.

Dorine describes Tartuffe as foolish.

COLLOQUIAL FORMAL

[kuh-loh-kwee-uh l] Informal, conversational “Books are a load of

crap,”

[fawr-muh l] formal, proper language

[Slang] Not adhering to the standard, usually

associated with a language variety used by uneducated speakers or socially disfavored groups.

Legal Jargon: affiant, indigent, ex parte Internet Slang: BTW, LOL, k, ttyl, g2g,

plz, r as in are, u as in you, brb as in be right back, c as in see

[uh-lit-uh-rey-shuh n] The recurrence of initial consonant

sounds. The repetition is usually limited to two words.

"I saw it there, but I saw nothing in it, except the rising of the boiling bubbles“ The Inferno, Dante

[ on-uh-mat-uh-pee-uh] The use of words which in their

pronunciation suggest their meaning. “Hiss,” for example, when spoken is intended to resemble to sound of steam or of a snake.

The use of words which in their pronunciation suggest their meaning. “Hiss,” for example, when spoken is intended to resemble to sound of steam or of a snake Eliot, Dry Salvages

BASIC INTERRUPTED

[bey-sik] Subject + verb + object Mary likes Dave.

[in-tuh-ruhpt] A sentence that is interrupted by

a parenthetical aside “To embrace your hero in his

destruction, however—to let your hero’s life occur within you when everything is trying to diminish him, to imagine yourself into his bad luck, to implicate yourself not in his mindless ascendancy, when he is the fixed point of your adulation, but in the bewilderment of his tragic fall—well, that’s worth thinking about.” Philip Roth, American Pastoral

INVERT LISTING

A sentence with multiple phrases that create a list.

“Never in his entire life, not as a son, a husband, a father, even as an employer, had he given way to anything so alien to the emotional rules by which he was governed, and later he wondered if this strange parental misstep was a not the lapse from responsibility for which he paid for the rest of his life.” Philip Roth, American Pastoral

[in-vurt] Begin with a part of speech

other than the subject. These inverted sentence patterns are used sometimes to delay revealing what the sentence is about and sometimes to create tension or suspense. Still other times, these patterns can be used to connect ideas between sentences more clearly.

  “It was always pleasant “crossing bridges in Paris.” Ernest Hemingway

[kyoo-myuh-luh-tiv] Begins with subject and verb and

adds modifying elements at end. She holds me in strong arms, arms

that have chopped cotton, dismembered trees, scattered corn for chickens, cradled infants, shaken the daylights out of half-grown upstart teenagers.

[peer-ee-od-ik] Opens with modifiers, withholds

subject and verb until the end. Unlike World Wars I and II, which

ended decisively with the unconditional surrender of the United States’ enemies, the war in Vietnam did not end when American troops withdrew.

[an-tith-uh-sis] Establishing a clear, contrasting

relationship between two ideas by joining them together or juxtaposing them, often in parallel structure.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong

A crossing parallelism, where the second part of a grammatical construction is balanced or paralleled by the first part, only in reverse order

[par-uh-le-liz-uh m] Expressing parallel or like ideas--

often compound. The government of the people, for

the people, by the people shall not perish from the earth.

DECLARATIVE IMPERATIVE

[di-klar-uh-tiv] Tonight the Lakers will

play the Knicks

[im-per-uh-tiv] commands, requests, or

instructs. The subject is most often you—unstated,

but understood Come here right now

EXCLAMATORY INTERROGATIVE

[ik-sklam-uh-tawr-ee] expresses strong

emotion I hope we will never

again undergo such an ordeal!

[in-tuh-rog-uh-tiv] “interrogates”—it asks a

question.  “interrogates”—it asks a

question.

SIMPLE COMPOUND

[kom-pound] Contains two or more

independent clauses We were exhausted, but

we arrived in time for my father's birthday party.

[sim-puh l] contains a least one

subject and at least one predicate; it can stand alone because it expresses a complete thought.  

Tom and Phil made the pizza.

ELLIPSIS ASYNDETON

[i-lip-sis] A rhetorical figure in

which one or more words are omitted.

“The First Amendment provides that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . ." U.S. Const. amend. I.

[uh-sin-di-ton] The omission of a conjunction

from a list. In a list of items, asyndeton gives the effect of unpremeditated multiplicity, of an extemporaneous rather than a labored account.

*We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardships, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” J. F. Kennedy, Inaugural

 

ANADIPLOSIS ANAPHORA

[an-uh-di-ploh-sis] A rhetorical trope formed by

repeating the last word of one phrase, clause or sentence at or very near the beginning of the next. It can be generate in series for the sake of beauty or to give a sense of logical progression.

“Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,/Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.” --Philip Sydney

[uh-naf-er-uh] Repetition of a word or

phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences.

“To think on death it is a misery,/ To think on life it is a vanity;/ To think on the world verily it is,/ To think that here man hath no perfect bliss.” --Peacham

EPISTROPHE POLYSYNDETON

[i-pis-truh-fee] The repetition of the same

word or words at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences. Counterpart to anaphora.

“Where affections bear rule, there reason is subdued, honesty is subdued, good will is subdued, and all things else that withstand evil, for ever are subdued.” Wilson

[pol-ee-sin-di-ton] The use of a conjunction

between each word, phrase, or clause, and is thus structurally the opposite of asyndeton. The rhetorical effect of polysyndeton, however, often shares with that of asyndeton a feeling of multiplicity, energetic enumeration, and building up.

“[He] pursues his way, / And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.” --John Milton

PARENTHETICAL ASIDE COLON

[par-uh n-thet-ikal] [uh-sahyd]

Consists of a word, phrase, or whole sentence inserted as an aside in the middle of another sentence

Our leader—a fearless an whom we all respect--was hiding in the library.

mThe punctuation mark (:) used to divide distinct but related sentence components such as clauses in which the second elaborates on the first, or to introduce a list, quotation, or speech. 

“I walked close to the left wall when I entered, but it was a empty: just the stairs curving up into shadows.” William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury