English III AP Rhetorical Strategies DIDLS and PELIDS

English III AP Rhetorical Strategies – DIDLS and PELIDS

Please note – this is only a partial list!

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Add examples to your cards as we encounter them!

DIDLS

Diction – the words an author uses; it refers chiefly to the choice of words, their arrangement, and the force, accuracy, and distinction with which they are used

· Connotation – the emotional overtone a word carries

· Denotation – the literal, dictionary definition of a word

· Semantics – dealing with the multiple meanings of words, especially how a word’s connotation may be at odds with its denotation

· Anagram – re-arranging the letters within a word to form an entirely new word; e.g. scared – sacred

· Epithet – rhetorical term for an adjective (or adjective phrase) used to characterize a person or thing; e.g., "Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness." NOTE: modern use gives this word a negative connotation, i.e., an insult

· Palindrome – a word, phrase, or sentence that reads the same backwards as it does forwards; e.g., racecar

· Invective - an insulting or abusive word or expression; name-calling

Imagery – devices used by a writer to appeal to the senses; does NOT just apply to sight, but also touch, taste, sound, smell

· Alliteration – the repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning of a series of words; most familiar because of tongue twisters; e.g. she sells seashells by the seashore

· Allusion - a brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or event; can refer to historical events, literary works, popular culture, or religious works

· Analogy – a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based; it is a form of simile or metaphor, but the emphasis is a comparison of the relationship; e.g., a heart pumps blood like an oil well pumps oil

· Euphemism – the substitution of an inoffensive term (such as "passed away") for one considered offensively explicit ("died")

· Extended metaphor – a comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem

· Hyperbole – figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect; an extravagant statement; it is often used ironically

· Irony - the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning; a statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea; please note that something DOES NOT have to be funny to be ironic!

o Verbal irony – the intended meaning of a statement differs from the meaning that the words appear to express

o Situational irony - involves an incongruity between what is expected or intended and what actually occurs

o Dramatic irony – an effect produced by a narrative in which the audience knows more about present or future circumstances than a character in the story

· Litotes – figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite

· Malapropism – absurd or humorous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound

· Metaphor – figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common

· Metonymy - figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated; for example, the order came from the White house

· Onomatopoeia – use of words (such as hiss or murmur) that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions to which they refer

· Motif – recurring theme or verbal pattern in a single text or a number of different texts

· Oxymoron – figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side

· Paradox – figure of speech in which a statement appears to contradict itself

· Personification – figure of speech (generally considered a type of metaphor) in which an inanimate object or abstraction is given human qualities or abilities

· Sarcasm – mocking, often ironic or satirical remark, usually intended to wound as well as amuse; closely related to verbal irony

· Simile – figure of speech in which two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared, usually in a phrase introduced by like or as

· Symbol/Symbolism – person, place, action, word, or thing that (by association, resemblance, or convention) represents something other than itself

· Synecdoche – figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole (for example, ABCs for alphabet) or the whole for a part (England won the 1966 World Cup)

· Synesthesia – process by which one sense is described or characterized in terms of another, such as "a bright sound" or "a quiet color"

· Understatement – figure of speech in which a writer or speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is

Details – item of information the author uses to create an image or compose an essay; in some cases, what a writer DOES NOT include is as important as what he DOES include as a detail

Language – an indication of the author’s tone, this refers to how an author uses language throughout the piece rather than the specific use of words as in diction. Is it formal or informal, slang or dialect, plain or elevated?

· Subjunctive mood – used to express a condition that is doubtful or not factual; often used to express hopes, dreams, and/or plans for the future

o “If I were able to type faster, I wouldn’t have to stay up so late doing homework.”

o “If I were to win one million dollars, I would retire.”

· Conditionals – qualifiers indicating a state that depends on meeting a necessary prerequisite in order to be achieved

o “Could I but fly!”

o If walls could talk.”

Syntax – refers to sentence structure and how words are arranged in clauses, sentences, and paragraphs

· Anaphora - the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses

· Antecedent – the noun or noun phrase that a pronoun refers to

· Antithesis – rhetorical term for the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases or clauses; e.g., “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

· Apostrophe - figure of speech in which some absent or nonexistent person or thing is addressed as if present and capable of understanding

· Asyndeton - rhetorical term for a writing style that omits conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses; e.g., "He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac."

· Chiasmus – a verbal pattern (a type of antithesis) in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first with the parts reversed; e.g., "You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget."

· Complement – The two kinds of complements are subject complements (which follow the verb “be” and other linking verbs) and object complements (which follow a direct object). If it identifies the subject, the complement is a noun or pronoun; if it describes the subject, the complement is an adjective.

· Cumulative sentence – an independent clause followed by a series of subordinate constructions (phrases or clauses) that gather details about a person, place, event, or idea; e.g., "I write this at a wide desk in a pine shed as I always do these recent years, in this life I pray will last, while the summer sun closes the sky to Orion and to all the other winter stars over my roof."

· Ellipsis – the omission of one or more words, which must be supplied by the listener or reader; e.g., “The streets were deserted, the doors bolted,” here the “were” is left out of the second part of the sentence

· Epistrophe - rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses; e.g., "Don't you ever talk about my friends! You don't know any of my friends. You don't look at any of my friends. And you certainly wouldn't condescend to speak to any of my friends."

· Parallelism – Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses. Also called parallel structure. By convention, items in a series appear in parallel grammatical form: a noun is listed with other nouns, an -ing form with other -ing forms, and so on; e.g., "Our transportation crisis will be solved by a bigger plane or a wider road, mental illness with a pill, poverty with a law, slums with a bulldozer, urban conflict with a gas, racism with a goodwill gesture."

· Periodic sentence – a long and frequently involved sentence, marked by suspended syntax, in which the sense is not completed until the final word--usually with an emphatic climax; e.g., "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing."

· Polysyndeton – A rhetorical term for a sentence style that employs many coordinating conjunctions (the opposite of asyndeton); e.g.; "He was a bag of bones or a floppy doll or a broken stick and a maniac."

· Predicate – one of the two main parts of a sentence or clause, modifying the subject and including the verb, objects, or phrases governed by the verb

· Syllepsis/zeugma – a figure of speech in which the same word, usually the verb, is applied to two others in different senses, one figurative, the other literal; e.g., “When I speak to Fred, I make sure to raise neither my voice nor my hopes.” This is also a form of ellipsis.

· Tautology – a redundancy – in particular, the needless repetition of an idea using different words; e.g., “In my opinion, I think . . .”

PELIDS

Pathos – emotional appeals meant to play on the feelings; while not necessarily a bad thing, it can also become a fallacy when the emotional appeal takes the place of making a valid point. Includes appeals to: pity, fear, jealousy, etc.

Ethos – ethical appeal, or an appeal to authority; the writer asserts himself as an authority figure, bases his argument on someone seen as an authority on the subject, or argues that whatever they are saying is the right thing to do

Logos – logical appeal; the writer is trying to persuade you that their position is the only one that makes any sense

Inductive Reasoning – moving from specific instances to reach a general conclusion; for example, I start looking at crows, and I notice that each time I see one, the crow is black. Using inductive logic, I can conclude that all crows are black

Deductive Reasoning – moving from a series of general statements to a specific conclusion; e.g., “You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally strong, so you could've put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But, you've also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."

Syllogism – a specific type of deductive reasoning based on three parts: a major premise (general observation), a minor premise (specific example), and a conclusion; e.g., Major premise: All men are mortal; Minor premise: Socrates is a man; Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

Logical Fallacies

Here, you are given an example of the fallacy. Your task is to come up with a definition or explanation.

Ad Hominem:

This is the best logical fallacy, and if you disagree with me, well, you suck.

Appeal To False Authority:

Your logical fallacies aren't logical fallacies at all because Einstein said so. Einstein also said that this one is better.

Appeal To Pity:

See, my mom, she had to work three jobs on account of my dad leaving and refusing to support us, and me with my elephantitis and all, all our money went to doctor's bills so I never was able to get proper schooling. So really, if you look deep down inside yourself, you'll see that my fallacy here is the best.

Appeal to Fear:

If you don't accept Appeal to Fear as the greatest fallacy, then THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON. Do you want that on your conscience that THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON because you were a pansy who didn't really think that Appeal to Fear was worth voting for, and you wanted to vote for something else? Of course not, and neither would the people you let die because THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON.

Appeal To Force:

If you don't agree that Appeal to Force is the greatest logical fallacy, I will beat you up.

Appeal To Majority:

Most people think that this fallacy is the best, so clearly it is.

Appeal To Novelty:

The Appeal to Novelty's a new fallacy, and it blows all your crappy old fallacies out the water! All the cool kids are using it: it's OBVIOUSLY the best.

Appeal To Tradition:

We've used Appeal to Tradition for centuries: how can it possibly be wrong?

Argumentum Ad Nauseam:

Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.