AP Language & Composition: Common Rhetorical Terms
| __ | 1. | Allegory | | A. | The word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun. | | __ | 2. | Allusion | | B. | An indirect reference | | __ | 3. | Antecedent | | C. | Word choice | | __ | 4. | Aphorism | | D. | Ordinary or familiar conversation | | __ | 5. | Colloquialism | | E. | Emotional association with a word | | __ | 6. | Connotation | | F. | Story in which characters, objects and events are symbolic | | __ | 7. | Denotation | | G. | The diction used by a certain group or profession | | __ | 8. | Diction | | H. | The literal or explicit meaning of a word | | __ | 9. | Didactic | | I. | fiction, nonfiction or poetry that teaches a lesson/moral | | __ | 10. | Jargon | | J. | "God helps those who help themselves." |
| __ | 11. | Ellipsis | | A. | A more agreeable, less offensive substitute of words/phrases | | __ | 12. | Euphemism | | B. | The deliberate omission of a word or phrase | | __ | 13. | Imagery | | C. | Replacing a word/idea with a related concept | | __ | 14. | Irony | | D. | A kind of metonymy when a whole is represented by its parts | | __ | 15. | Juxtaposition | | E. | When what happens is not what is expected | | __ | 16. | Metonymy | | F. | A word/words used to create a picture in the reader's mind | | __ | 17. | Mood | | G. | Placing things side by side for the purposes of comparison | | __ | 18. | Motif | | H. | atmosphere created in a text and accomplished by diction | | __ | 19. | Oxymoron | | I. | When two contradictory terms are placed together as truth | | __ | 20. | Synecdoche | | J. | A recurrent idea in a piece of literature/text |
| __ | 21. | Chiasmus | | A. | When the same words are used twice, but reversed | | __ | 22. | Paradox | | B. | A seemingly contradictory situation appearing true | | __ | 23. | Parallelism | | C. | Choices in diction, tone, and syntax that a writer makes | | __ | 24. | Polysyndeton | | D. | Sentence construction of equal grammatical patterns nearby | | __ | 25. | Style | | E. | A list of items separated by conjunctions | | __ | 26. | Theme | | F. | The central idea or message of a work |
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