English Language and Literature Terminology

Things that exist physically

Things that refer to ideas or feelings

Replace nouns 'You', 'We', 'She' and established sense of identity, distance and mystery

Specific people and places, add realism

Pre or post, add detail to noun or verb to influence reader

Describe the best or worst of something, emphasise extremes

Physical actions, often imply that the action is more important in the sentence

Express state of being or processes with no obvious action

Verbs which cannot take an object

Verb which must take an object

Verbs such as 'most', 'could', 'should' which express degrees of certainty, obligation or possibility

Words that arouse strong feelings in the audience

Words that are used figuratively to construct a comparision

Words that rely on context to give them meaning

Term to describe language that is mainly factual

Expressions from everyday speech, often found in spontaneous conversation and writing which tries to mimic this (realism)

A style of writing suited to a particular purpose, e.g. informal/formal

An individual's unique style of speaking

Slang expressions found in everyday speech which are not to be taken literally, e.g. 'It's raining cats and dogs'

Language producing feelings of pity or sorrow

Language delibrately used for anti-climatic effect

Expressing ideas through repeating sentence structures for emphasis or effect

Pattern of three used, giving a sense of rhythm

Sentence without a verb

A sentence that contains only one verb

Two clauses joined together with a connective, e.g. 'and', 'if', 'but'

Two or more clauses joined together, of which one clause would not make sense without the other

Statement, used for facts and opinions

Begin with a verb. Used to give instruction, warning or advice; often connote power

End with '!', used to express extreme feelings of horror, shock, anger, surprise etc

End with a '?', and used to make the audience consider the question asked

Omission of part of a sentence that can only be understood by context

Listing which does not contain any conjunctions

List which contains conjunctions

Exaggeration or overstatement for delibrate effect

When the meaning of a situation is understood by the audience, but not by the characters

One thing is used to represent another

Ideas, feelings or associations that a word suggests in addition to its primary, literal meaning

The primary, literal meaning with no extra associations

Linguistic devices used to influence the audience e.g. parallelism, hyperbole, rhetorical questions, emotive language

A set of words catergorised in a certain way

Simplest unit of speech, bounded only by a fullstop

Word that changes or qualifies the meaning of a verb, adjective, other adverb, clause, sentence or any other word or phrase, except that it does not include the adjectives and determiners that directly modify nouns. 

Describing word, which gives more information about a noun or noun phrase

Two or more words which contain the same vowel letter or sound

A single noun or pronoun that function together as a noun or pronoun, which function together as a subject or object of a verb

How people refer to each other

Words used to soften the force of something that is being said, e.g. 'Perhaps', 'maybe'

The topic of conversation

When a speaker re-formulates an utterance to include information that should have been included earlier

Formulaic utterances with stock responses, used to establish rapport

Exchanges between speakers that are connected and have expected responses (e.g. a question expects an answer)

Group of words that modifies or tells us something about the sentence or verb (time, manner, place, frequency etc)

Use of a form of a speech or writing that is no longer current

Study of the history of words

Intends to underline the vices of society

Imitation of the style of a particular writer that mocks the piece

Work of literature that closely imitates the work of a writer etc but celebrates rather than mocks the piece of work

The order of words

A contrast or direct opposition of something else

A word or phrase inserted as an explanation or afterthought into a passage which is grammatically complete without it, in writing usually marked off by brackets, dashes, or commas

Arranging of type in order to make language visible

Study of handwriting