Literature
Terms and Devices
Literal Language
• language used to state a fact
or idea directly.
• Example: He collapsed on the
grass weakly.
Meaning Devices
• Devices used by authors that
directly affect the meaning of
the words, phrases, sentences,
etc. of a piece of literature.
Diction
• Diction- Writer’s choice of words
• WORD CHOICE
• The words that a writer chooses to
use may carry both denotative and
connotative meanings.
Denotative
• is its explicit definition as listed
in a dictionary. (Dictionary
Definition)
Connotative
• the association or set of
associations that a word usually
brings to mind (Self/Association
Definition)
Denotative Vs. Connotative
Denotation
any of
numerous
scaly, legless,
sometimes
venomous
reptiles; having
a long,
tapering,
cylindrical
body and found
in most
tropical and
temperate
regions
Connotation
Evil, danger,
deceit
Syntax
• Writer’s ordering
of words
• Word Order
• The way that an
author orders
words can
directly affect
the meaning
• Ex/
Mary loves John
does not mean that
John loves Mary
The dog bit the man.
Translates
differently than
The man bit the dog.
Figurative Language
• language that represents one
thing in terms of another.
(animism, apostrophe, hyperbole,
metaphor, metonymy, personification,
simile, synecdoche, and
understatement.)
• Example: He collapsed on the
grass like a half-empty flour
sack.
Figure of Speech
• statement that is not literally
true but makes an abstraction
more understandable; an
expression in which words are
used in a non-literal way in
order to convey a forceful or
vivid mental picture.
Animism
• attributing life, but not human
life, to an inanimate thing or
natural object or to something
that is not that animal.
Animism Example
Fog
by: Carl Sandburg
“The fog comes on
little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.”
Apostrophe
• addressing an abstract quality,
an inanimate object, or a
person (usually absent).
Apostrophe Examples
“O world, I cannot hold thee close
enough!”
--Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “God’s World”
“O wild West Wind, thou breath of
Autumn’s being”—Shelley
“To what purpose, April, do you return
again?”
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
Hyperbole
• an obvious overstatement or
exaggeration.
• Examples:
• The students worked their fingers to
the bone completing their English
assignments.
• Before he reached the dentist’s
office, he died a thousand deaths.
Idiom
• language typical of a particular
group of people in which words
do not directly translate into
their literal meaning.
• Examples:
• turn over a new leaf (begin
again)
• hold your tongue (be quiet)
Metaphor
• a statement that says one thing is
something else, which literally it is
not; a statement that identifies two
things with each other.
• Examples:
• The tumbleweeds are the lost
children of the desert.
• The ocean is a huge swimming pool.
Metonymy
• the use of the name of one
thing to substitute for
something closely associated
with it.
• Examples: The White House
decided…(meaning the
President decided)
• The pot is boiling… (meaning
what is in the pot is boiling)
Oxymoron
• a very short self-contradictory
statement; a compressed
paradox.
• Examples: Good Grief, Minor
Miracle, Small Fortune, Little
Big Horn, Old News, Dull Roar,
Baby Grand, White Gold
Paradox
• a statement that seems to be
self-contradictory or absurd
but really involves an element
of truth.
Paradox Examples
• “The child is the father of the
man.”
--William Wordsworth
• “The peasant lives in a larger
world than a globe trotter.”
--G.K. Chesterton
Personification
• giving human qualities to
something non-human (an
animal or a thing).
• Example: “The wind stood up
and gave a shout.”-- James
Stephens.
Simile
• a comparison of two different things
that is introduced by like or as.
• Examples:
• The moon shone like a new silver
dollar.
• “O, my love is like a red, red rose.”—
Robert Burns
Synecdoche
• a special kind of metonymy
that uses part of a thing to
stand for the whole thing. This
part must be an essential
element of the whole and
directly descriptive of it.
Synecdoche Example
• Examples:
• Forty heads of cattle were
missing
• All hands on deck.
Understatement
• A technique of creating emphasis
by saying less than what is
actually true.
• Example: from Tony Hillerman’s The
Great Taos Bank Robbery ~ “The
reader might well pause here and
recollect that it is traditional for
robbers to steal escape vehicles, not
to borrow them from friends.”
Literary Devices that
depend on the sounds
that words make:
• alliteration, assonance,
consonance, onomatopoeia,
rhyme, and rhythm.
Alliteration
• repetition of the same
consonant sound used in two or
more words that occur close
together.
• Example: The little lady loved
to listen to lullabies.
Assonance
• repetition of the same vowel
sounds in words where the
consonants are different.
• Example: fate and sake; ivory
eyes; beach and seem
Consonance
• repetition of the same
consonant sound especially at
the end of a stressed syllables.
• Examples: The first and last
toast; Crisscross; Chitter
chatter
Onomatopoeia
• a word or phrase that imitates
the sound of what it describes.
• Example: buzz, hiss, crash,
whirr, clash, hoot
Other Devices
Allusion
• Reference to a person, place, event,
or thing with literary, historical, or
geographical significance
• Examples: In the novel To Kill a
Mockingbird, Harper Lee includes an
allusion to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
inaugural address. (“We have nothing
to fear but fear itself.”)
Cliché
• a phrase or expression that
has been used so much that it
has lost its novelty and
interest.
• Example: She avoided me like
the plague.
Imagery
• words used to create a sensory
(hearing, taste, smell, touch, or
sight) experience.
• Example: The puppy’s cold
nose nudged my hand.