Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
www.rpdp.net
Language Terms
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
1
#1
Identify the device being used:
“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
(The Wizard of Oz)
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#1 Answer
• Polysyndeton
• The device of repeating conjunctions in
close succession.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#2
Identify the device being used:
“Of the people, by the people, for the
people”
(Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address)
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #2
• Epistrophe
• The repetition of a word or group of words
at the end of successive phrases, clauses,
verses, or sentences
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#3
Identify the term/device:
A pleasing arrangement of sounds
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #3
• Euphony
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#4
Identify the device being used:
“Heard melodies are sweet.”
(John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”)
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #4
• Synaesthesia
• The use of one kind of sensory experience
to describe another
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#5
Identify the device being used:
“All the other lads there were /
Were Itching to have a bash.”
(Philip Larkin, “Send No Money”)
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #5
• Colloquialism
• An informal or slang expression, especially
in the context of formal writing
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#6
Identify the term/device:
The atmosphere of a work of literature; the
emotion created by the work
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #6
Mood
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#7
Identify the device being used:
Saying “ethnic cleansing” instead of
“genocide”
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #7
• Euphemism
• The use of less offensive language to
express unpleasant or vulgar ideas,
events, or actions
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#8
Identify the term/device:
The person (sometimes a character) who
tells a story; the voice assumed by the
writer. Not necessarily the author (but it
can be).
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #8
Narrator
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#9
• The following are examples:
– Richard Wright’s Black Boy
– Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life
– Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #9
• Autobiography
• The narrative of a person’s life, written by
that person.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#10
Identify the device being used:
The moon smiled down at us as we sat by
the river.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #10
• Personification
• The use of human characteristics to
describe animals, objects, or ideas.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#11
Identify the term/device:
The character an author assumes in a
written work.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #11
Persona
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Standards ELA
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#12
Identify the term/device:
An author’s individual way of using language
to reflect his or her own personality and
attitudes. An author communicates this
through tone, diction, and sentence
structure.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #12
Voice
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#13
Identify the term/device:
The works of Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy,
Bronte and other great writers.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #13
Canon
• An evolving group of literary works
considered essential to a culture’s literary
tradition.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#14
• The following are examples:
– Richard the Lionheart
– Shoeless Joe Jackson
– The Brooklyn Bomber
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #14
• Epithet
• An adjective or phrase that describes a
prominent or distinguishing feature of a
person or thing
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#15
Identify the device being used:
In Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, the
nightmares Lockwood has the night he
sleeps in Catherine’s bed prefigure later
events in the novel.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #15
• Foreshadowing
• An author’s deliberate use of hints or
suggestions to give a preview of events or
themes that do not develop until later in
the narrative.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#16
Identify the device being used:
The ship was crewed by fifty hands.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #16
Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part of an
entity is used to refer to the whole
(In this case, “hands” alludes to the
people—all of the people—manning the
ship.)
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#17
Identify the term/device:
A technique of detachment that draws
awareness to the discrepancy between
words and their meanings, between
expectation and fulfillment, or, most
commonly, between what is and what
seems to be.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #17
• Irony
(Five types = verbal, situational, romantic,
dramatic/tragic, and cosmic)
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#18
Identify the term/device:
Specific facts or examples used to support a
claim in a piece of writing.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #18
Evidence
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Standards ELA
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#19
Identify the device being used:
“Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.”
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 129)
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #19
Parallelism
• The use of similar grammatical structures
or word order in two or more sentences,
clauses, or phrases to suggest a
comparison or contrast between them.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#20
Identify the term/device:
The art of persuasion, or the art of speaking
or writing well. This involves the study of
how words influence audiences.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #20
Rhetoric
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Standards ELA
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#21
Identify the term/device:
The main idea, or principal claim, that is
supported in a work of nonfiction.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #21
Thesis statement
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Standards ELA
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#22
Identify the term/device:
The author’s attitude toward the subject or
characters of a story or poem, or toward
the reader.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #22
tone
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Standards ELA
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#23
Identify the device being used:
Asking the wealthy nations of the world to
feed the impoverished nations is like
asking people on a full lifeboat to take on
more passengers.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #23
Analogy
• A comparison based on a specific similarity
between things that are otherwise unlike, or the
inference that if two things are alike in some
ways, they will be alike in others. Often
analogies draw a comparison between
something abstract and something more
concrete or easier to visualize.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#24
Identify the device being used:
“And all men kill the thing they love.”
(Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”)
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #24
Paradox
• A statement that seems absurd or even
contradictory but that often expresses a
deeper truth.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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#25
Identify the device being used:
My teacher is a total psychopath.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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Answer #25
• Hyperbole
• Excessive overstatement or conscious
exaggeration of fact.
SNRPDP: Common Core State
Standards ELA
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