Analyzing Syntax/ Commentary Practice
Syntax is arguably the most difficult task for AP Juniors to decipher. The following activity will help you analyze syntax
effectively by using concise language.
When reading a prompt, don’t think you have to go for the most difficult syntactic devices to analyze. You should
analyze the devices that seem to be purposeful (author purpose).Therefore, try to look through the author’s eyes. Most
of the prompts that ask for a syntax analysis use simple parallels or repetition that all of you should feel comfortable
connecting to author purpose. Memorizing the simple syntax terms can be useful to your analysis.
Parallelism (or parallel construction) – a form of repetition, when a speaker or writer expresses ideas of equal worth
with the same grammatical form.
Example: I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world,……
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves,…
I see in low life the mother misused by her children,…
I see the wife misused by her husband,…
Walt Whitman
What I find helpful is to take the definition of the syntactic device and connect it to the context of the
example or the selection. I will model the first one for you.
Commentary: This parallel construction creates a rolling rhythm, emphasizing the role of the speaker
witnessing several sorrows of the world. . Whitman equates his ideas in order to place emphasis on global
strife and decay.
Anaphora- is a repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive lines, clauses, or sentences.
Example:
Blackness
is a title
is a preoccupation
is a commitment
Gwendolyn Brooks
Now you try to develop commentary for this example:
syntax practice continued
Rhetorical Question-is a question to which no answer is expected because the answer is obvious. Rhetorical
questions are often used in persuasive writing to emphasize a point or create an emotional effect. Your
job is to figure out what point or what emotional effect.
Example:
Patrick Henry asks this rhetorical question in his “Speech in the Virginia Convention”:
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”
Now, provide commentary: