English Lit. AS Unit 1 Aspects of Narrative

Alliteration: 2 or more words of a word group placed together with same letter

Allusion: a reference/mention of something, either directly or by implication

Antagonist: a person in a text who is opposed to, struggles against, or competes with another

Antithesis: opposition/contrast

Assonance: rhyme in which the same vowel sounds are used with different consonants in the stressed syllables of the rhyming words

Bathos: descent from the exalted to the commonplace

Characterisation: the way an author creates a character and why

Chronological order: sequence of events as they happen

Colloquial: informal

Consonance: correspondence/harmony of sounds

Context: circumstances surrounding a text which affect how it is read and understood, affecting interpretation

Cultural stereotype: characters' features that we are conditioned to recognise as having a certain meaning

Declarative: sentence type- a statement

Dialogue: conversation between characters

Direct speech: when quotation marks are used to present the actual words of a character

Enjambment: the continuation of a sentence from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause

First person narrator: story told through the voice of one of the characters

Foreshadow: prediction of future events

Form: aspects of a text that enable it to be labelled as a certain type within its genre

Free speech: speech that is not directly attributed

Fricative: sound characterised by audible friction produced by forcing the breath through a constricted or partially obstructed passage in the vocal tract

Genre: type of text- can be labelled due to content/style/audience etc

Hyperbole: exaggeration

Ideology: attitudes and values that a text contains

Idiolect: individual way of speaking

Imagery: the formation of mental images

Imperative: sentence type- using a verb as a command

Indirect speech: reported by the narrator, giving a version of the words spoken rather than the words themselves

Irony: the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning

Juxtaposition: placing words/ideas close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast

Kinesics: the study of body movements, gestures, facial expressions, etc, as a means of communication

Lexis: vocabulary choice

Litotes: deliberate understatement

Meta-narrative: a narrative told to justify another story, especially involving artifice; a story about oneself that provides a view of one's own experiences

Metaphor: the transfer of meaning when one thing is described as another

Metre: repeated units of rhythm in poetry which are measured according to 'feet'

Metrical foot: unit of rhythm which is named according to the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables

Monosyllabic: words containing one syllable

Narrative: involves how events and causes are shown and various methods used by the author/poet

Non-fluency features: informal features used in spoken word

Noun: an object/person/place

Onomatopoeia: the formation of a word by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent

Oxymoron: combination of contradictory words

Pathetic fallacy: the endowment of nature, inanimate objects, etc. with human traits and feelings

Pathos: the quality of power in an actual life experience or in literature, music, speech or other forms of expression, of evoking a feeling of pity or compassion

Personification: the attribution of a personal nature or character to inanimate objects or abstract notions

Phonology: the use of sounds in texts for effect

Plosives: sounds characterised by release in a plosion, explosive

Plot: chain of causes and circumstances that connect events and place them in relationship with each other

Polysyllabic: words containing more than one syllable

Post-modernism: any number of trends or movements in the arts and literature developing in the 1970s in reaction to or rejection of the dogma, principles, or practices of established modernism

Prolepsis: foreshadowing of future events

Pronoun: grammatical word class such as I, you, he, this, who, what

Protagonist: the leading character, hero or heroine of a drama or other literary work

Realism: a manner of treating subject manner that presents a careful description of everyday life

Register: level of formality/informality of voice/narrative

Representations: characters and events as constructs, not real

Rhetoric: the art or science of literary uses of language in prose or verse, including the figures of speech

Rhyming couplets: when lines of verse rhyme in the pattern of aa, bb, cc

Semantic field: a group of words connected by concept/theme

Sibilance: a group of words that all begin with the letter s

Simile: when one things is described as being as or like another

Stichomythia: frequent snappy dialogue between characters that causes tension

Structure: how parts of a text work together to form a whole

Story: all events that will be shown in a text

Symbolic: symbols which involve the reader to make certain connections not directly stated

Third person narrative: story told through the voice of the narrator who is not one of the characters in the story

Tragedy: a dramatic composition, often in verse or in play form, dealing with a serious or sombre theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction