AP English Language and Composition
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition aligned with the College Board CED. Covers rhetorical analysis, argumentation, synthesis writing, and major American rhetorical texts.
Ämne: Engelska · Nivå: Gymnasium (16–19) · 455 kort
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- The rhetorical situation includes the exigence, audience, purpose, speaker/writer, context, and message of a text. Analyzing it is the foundation of AP Lang Unit 1.
- Exigence is the urgent issue, problem, or situation that prompts a writer or speaker to act. Lloyd Bitzer introduced the term in 'The Rhetorical Situation' (1968).
- Aristotle's three rhetorical appeals are ethos (credibility/character), pathos (emotion), and logos (logic/reason). They appear together in most persuasive texts.
- Ethos is the appeal to the speaker's credibility, character, or authority. Writers build ethos through expertise, fair-mindedness, shared values, and a trustworthy tone.
- Pathos is the appeal to the audience's emotions, values, or imagination. Vivid imagery, anecdotes, and connotative language are common pathos strategies.
- Logos is the appeal to logic, reason, and evidence. It includes statistics, expert testimony, historical examples, and well-constructed deductive or inductive arguments.
- Kairos is the appeal to timeliness — the strategic use of the right moment, occasion, or cultural context. It complements the Aristotelian appeals.
- Audience refers to the intended readers or listeners of a text. Skilled writers adjust diction, examples, evidence, and tone to address specific audience values and assumptions.
- Purpose is what a writer hopes to accomplish — to persuade, inform, satirize, commemorate, console, or call to action. Identifying purpose drives rhetorical analysis.
- Context includes the historical, cultural, political, and social circumstances surrounding a text's creation and reception. It shapes both the writer's choices and the audience's response.
- Speaker (or persona) is the constructed voice through which the author addresses the audience. The speaker may differ from the actual author, as in satire or persona-driven essays.
- Tone is the writer's attitude toward the subject, audience, or self, conveyed through diction, syntax, and detail. Tone words include reverent, sardonic, contemplative, indignant, and elegiac.
- Mood is the emotional atmosphere a text creates in the reader, distinct from tone (which is the writer's attitude). The same text can have a somber mood and a critical tone.
- Rhetoric is the art of effective and persuasive communication, especially the strategic use of language to inform, persuade, or move an audience. Aristotle defined it as the faculty of observing the available means of persuasion.
- Diction is a writer's word choice. Effective rhetorical analysis distinguishes between formal/informal, abstract/concrete, denotative/connotative, and Latinate/Anglo-Saxon diction.
- Syntax is the arrangement of words and phrases into sentences. Variation in sentence length, structure, and punctuation creates emphasis, pacing, and tone.
- Denotation is a word's literal, dictionary meaning. Connotation is the cluster of associations, emotions, and cultural meanings a word carries beyond its dictionary definition.
- A metaphor is a direct comparison of two unlike things without 'like' or 'as' (e.g., 'America is a melting pot'). It asserts identity rather than likeness, often producing fresh insight.
- A simile is a comparison of two unlike things using 'like,' 'as,' or 'than' (e.g., 'busy as a bee'). Unlike metaphor, simile preserves the distance between the compared elements.
- An analogy is an extended comparison that explains a complex idea by likening it to a simpler or more familiar one. Analogies often work paragraph-by-paragraph rather than in a single line.
- Personification gives human qualities to nonhuman things or abstract ideas (e.g., 'Justice is blind'). It can humanize concepts and make them more emotionally accessible.
- Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration for emphasis or effect, often comic or indignant. 'I've told you a million times' is hyperbole; the speaker doesn't mean it literally.
- Understatement (or litotes) deliberately downplays the magnitude of something for effect. Calling a hurricane 'a bit breezy' is understatement; saying 'not bad' to mean excellent is litotes.
- Irony is a discrepancy between expectation and reality. Verbal irony says one thing while meaning another; situational irony reverses expected outcomes; dramatic irony lets the audience know more than the characters.
- Satire uses humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize vice, folly, or social ills. Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' is the canonical English-language example.
- Juvenalian satire is harsh, biting, and morally indignant, aiming to provoke disgust. Horatian satire is gentler, witty, and amused. AP Lang prompts often ask students to identify which mode a writer adopts.
- Allusion is a brief, often indirect reference to a person, event, text, or cultural touchstone the audience is assumed to recognize. Biblical, Shakespearean, and classical allusions are common in canonical American rhetoric.
- Metonymy substitutes a related term for a thing itself (e.g., 'the crown' for the monarchy, 'the White House' for the U.S. presidency). It compresses meaning and signals associations.
- Synecdoche names a part to represent the whole, or the whole to represent a part (e.g., 'all hands on deck'). It is a specialized form of metonymy.
- Anaphora repeats a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences. King's 'I have a dream' refrain is a famous example; the device builds rhythm and emphasis.
- Epistrophe repeats a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses (e.g., Lincoln's 'of the people, by the people, for the people'). It is the mirror image of anaphora.
- Antithesis places contrasting ideas in parallel grammatical structure (e.g., Kennedy's 'Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country'). It sharpens opposition.
- Chiasmus reverses the order of words in two parallel clauses (e.g., 'Eat to live, not live to eat'). When the reversal is exact, it is sometimes called antimetabole.
- Parallelism arranges words, phrases, or clauses in similar grammatical form. It clarifies relationships, aids memory, and creates rhythmic emphasis — a backbone of speeches like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
- Asyndeton omits conjunctions between coordinate elements (e.g., 'I came, I saw, I conquered'). It accelerates pace and conveys urgency or breadth.
- Polysyndeton inserts conjunctions where they could be omitted (e.g., 'and the rain and the wind and the sea'). It slows pace and adds weight to each element.
- A rhetorical question is asked for effect rather than to elicit an answer. It can invite reflection, challenge assumptions, or imply the answer is obvious.
- Apostrophe is a direct address to an absent person, abstract idea, or inanimate object (e.g., 'O Death, where is thy sting?'). Not to be confused with the punctuation mark.
- Anecdote is a brief personal story used to illustrate a point, build ethos, or engage emotions. Anecdotes are common openers in opinion writing and TED-style talks.
- A claim is a debatable assertion the writer must support with evidence and reasoning. Claims of fact, value, and policy each require different kinds of support.
- A thesis is the central, overarching claim of an essay. AP Lang rubrics reward defensible theses that establish a line of reasoning rather than merely restating the prompt.
- A claim of fact asserts that something is or is not the case (e.g., 'Climate change is human-caused'). Support comes from data, expert testimony, and verified evidence.
- A claim of value asserts that something is good, bad, just, or beautiful (e.g., 'Censorship undermines democracy'). Support draws on shared standards and ethical reasoning.
- A claim of policy asserts that something should or should not be done (e.g., 'Schools should ban smartphones'). Support requires both factual and value claims plus a feasibility argument.
- Evidence is the support a writer offers for claims: facts, statistics, expert testimony, historical examples, personal anecdotes, analogies, and textual citations.
- Commentary is the writer's explanation of how evidence supports a claim. AP Lang rubrics emphasize commentary over evidence quantity — a single piece of evidence well-explained beats four undeveloped ones.
- A warrant (in Toulmin's model) is the underlying assumption that connects evidence to claim. If the warrant isn't shared by the audience, the argument fails even when evidence is solid.
- Stephen Toulmin's model of argument has six parts: claim, grounds (evidence), warrant, backing, qualifier, and rebuttal. It is widely taught alongside the classical Aristotelian model.
- A qualifier in Toulmin's model limits the strength of a claim (e.g., 'usually,' 'in most cases,' 'probably'). Qualifiers signal intellectual honesty and make claims harder to refute.
- A counterargument is the strongest version of the opposing view, presented honestly. Engaging counterarguments builds credibility and lets the writer sharpen their own claim through rebuttal.