Drama/Dialogue and Rhetoric

Question 1

aside

Answer 1

a character’s speech heard by the audience but supposedly not by other characters - Iago talking about his intentions in Othello

Question 2

colloquial diction

Answer 2

words or expressions that are informal in nature and generally represent a certain region or time - ya’ll

Question 3

dialect

Answer 3

a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language - “How are ya’ll doin’?”

Question 4

euphemism

Answer 4

the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant - “passed away” instead of “died”

Question 5

monologue

Answer 5

an extended speech by one character - Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird at the end of the trial

Question 6

soliloquy

Answer 6

the act of talking to oneself; a poem, discourse, or utterance of a character in a drama that has the form of a monologue or gives the illusion of being a series of unspoken reflections - “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

Question 7

stage directions

Answer 7

a description or direction provided in the text of a play - “Lily enters the room”

Question 8

anaphora

Answer 8

repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect - “Go big or go home”

Question 9

asyndeton

Answer 9

omission of the conjunctions that ordinarily join coordinate words or clauses - “I came, I saw, I conquered”

Question 10

chiasmus

Answer 10

an inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases - “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” -John F. Kennedy.

Question 11

epigraph

Answer 11

a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme - “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once” Charles Lamb, To Kill a Mockingbird

Question 12

esipstrophe

Answer 12

repetition of a word of expression at the end of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect - “Face the dawn, fear the dawn, own the dawn”

Question 13

in media res

Answer 13

into the middle of a narrative; without preamble - The Iliad

Question 14

juxtaposition

Answer 14

the act or an instance of placing two or more things side by side often to compare or contrast or to create an interesting effect - “All’s fair in love and war”

Question 15

litotes

Answer 15

understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary - “not unhappy”

Question 16

periodic sentence

Answer 16

a usually complex sentence that has no subordinate or trailing elements following its principal clause - “In spite of heavy snow and freezing temperatures, the event continued.”

Question 17

peripeteia

Answer 17

a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation especially in a literary work - a rich man suddenly becomes poor

Question 18

polysyndeton

Answer 18

repetition of conjunctions in close succession - “I wore mittens, and gloves, and a hat, and boots.”

Question 19

telegraphic sentence

Answer 19

a concise sentence typically containing five words or less - “Dad fix it.”