7/25/2019 Language Techniques - Glossary of Not So Common Techniques

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Glossary of not so common techniques

Allegory: a story, poem, or picture which can be interpreted to reveal a

hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

Anthropomorphism: the attribution of human form or behaviour to agod, animal, or object.

Anthropopathy: ascription of human passions or feelings to a being or

beings not human, especially to a deity.

Antithesis: a person, idea, or thing that is the direct opposite of

someone or something else (“to be or not to be”) – includes oxymoron,

binary opposites, paradoxes, contradictions

Oxymoron: A contradiction in terms. (Romeo describes love using

several oxymorons, such as “cold fre,” “eather o lead” and “sickhealth,” to suggest its contradictory nature.)

Archetype: a very typical eample of a certain person or thing.

Creative license: !aggeration or alteration of objective facts or reality,

for the purpose of enhancing meaning in a "ctional contet.

Deus ex machina: #atin for $%od out of the machine$, this term

describes the primary con&ict being solved out of nowhere, as if %od or a

miracle could only solve the comple con&ict.

Didactic: intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an

ulterior motive.

Enumeration: a collection of items that is a complete, ordered listing of

all of the items in that collection.

Foil: A character who is meant to represent characteristics, values or

ideas which are opposite to another character (usually the protagonist).

Foreshadoing: 'here future events in a story, or perhaps the outcome,

are suggested by the author before they happen.

!igh "odality must not*, have to*, should not*, never*

#exical Chain: A leical chain is a se+uence of related words in writing,

spanning short (adjacent words or sentences) or long distances (entire

tet)

"eta$citon: he narrator of a meta"ctional wor- will call attention to the

writing process itself. he reader is never to forget that what they are

reading is constructednot natural, not $real.$ hey are never to get $lost$

in the story.

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Glossary of not so common techniques

"odality: $/0odality1 is what ma-es the di2erence between a factual

assertion li-e unicorns never existed, and a more guarded view, such as it

seems likely that unicorns could ever have existedor a bolder claim

li-e the existence o unicorns must always have been a myth.

"odi$er: a word, especially an adjective or noun used attributively, thatrestricts or adds to the sense of a head noun (e.g. good and amily  in a

good amily house ).

%astiche: an artistic wor- in a style that imitates that of another wor-,

artist, or period (to pay homage – unli-e  parody  – which is designed to

po-e fun). he pastiche is a central postmodern genre. he word pastiche

comes from the 3talian pasticcio, which means a miture of various

ingredients or a hotchpotch. 4ne method of pastiche is to mi genre. 3t

stems from the postmodern idea that there are no new ideas and so we

can only pay homage those that have "rst had them. 5ew creativity iswhat we do with old ideas (for eample miing them together).

%athetic fallacy: 'hen the mood of the character is re&ected in the

atmosphere (weather) or inanimate objects.

%re&"odi$er: a noun that occurs before and modi"es another noun (as

toy  in toy store or tour  in tour group).

'hythm and "eter: 3n poetry, the patterned recurrence, within a

certain range of regularity, of speci"c language features, usually features

of sound

(ynesthesia: to present ideas, characters or places in such a manner

that they appeal to more than one senses li-e hearing, seeing, smell etc.

at a given time.

(yntax: the arrangement of words and phrases to create wellformed

sentences in a language.