audience - The person or persons who listen to a spoken text or read a written one and are capable of responding to it.
Ex: The audience of Michael Chabon's lecture at the Mondavi Center was composed of many Oak Ridge students.
chiasmus - Inverted relationship between two elements in two parallel phrases.
Ex: "To stop too fearful and too faint to go."
claim - The ultimate conclusion, generalization, or point that a syllogism or enthymeme expresses. The point, backed up by support, of an argument.
Ex: In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck's claim was that the poor are wrongly mistreated.
climax - The arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in order of increasing number or importance.
Ex: "He risked truth, he risked honor, he risked fame, he risked all that men hold dear,—yea, he risked life itself..."
climbing the ladder - A term referring to the scheme of climax.
Ex: See climax.
isocolon - Parallel elements that are similar in structure and in length.
Ex: "… to impress the ignorant, to perplex the dubious, and to confound the scrupulous …"
mnemonic device - A systematic aid to memory.
Ex: "Roy G. Biv" for the most common colors.
onomatopoeia - A literary device in which the sound of a word is related to its meaning.
Ex: Words like "bang," and "click".
revising - Returning to a draft to rethink, reread, and rework ideas and sentences.
Ex: I am currently revising my research paper.
scene - In a dramatistic pentad created by a speaker or writer in order to invent material, the words the speaker or writer uses to describe where and when something happened or happens in a particular situation.
Ex: "My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations" (Fitzgerald 2).
simple sentence - A sentence with one independent clause and no dependent clause.
Ex: The dog ran.
situation - The convergence in a situation of exigency (the need to write), audience, and purpose.
Ex: Before drafting my research paper, I had to analyze my purpose and how much background information to provide for my audience.
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