Talk on WeChat
Language Techniques Glossary
A complete list (with examples!) of every language technique you’ll need to ace your English study!
TL;DR
- This blog provides a comprehensive glossary of language techniques, with clarifying examples, so you can expand on your knowledge and ace your English assessments and exams!
- Language techniques are one of the most important areas of study for English!
- Language techniques are relevant to our essay writing, unseen text analysis (short answer responses) and creative, persuasive and discursive writing.
- A broad knowledge and understanding of language techniques helps us understand and analyse our English texts with more detail, and make our own writing more descriptive.
Introduction
Language techniques, literary devices, figurative language – we’ve heard these phrases all the time throughout highschool English. They are some of the most important tools at our disposal when writing our own and analysing others’ work.
If we think about an English text as a house, the bricks of the house are the figurative devices the author has chosen. We focus so strongly on them in English because they are the tools that authors use to shape and convey meaning.
The nuance of our work comes from understanding the different types of meaning conveyed by different techniques, and having enough knowledge and confidence to use high level figurative devices in our creative, persuasive and discursive pieces (what’s up Mod C!).
This is where Dymocks comes in to help you! This glossary of techniques, with examples from HSC prescribed texts and explanations as to each technique’s effect, is ordered from simpler techniques to higher level techniques. This way you can organise your study to what area you’d like to focus on and tangibly measure your knowledge level.
Happy studying!
These techniques are often taught in junior highschool and you should have a firm understanding of these and be able to analyse them in an unseen text and employ them in your own compositions.
| Technique | Definition and Effect | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Alliteration | The repetition of the same sound at the beginning of the words in a sentence. It creates rhythm and emphasis. | “sloe black, slow, black, crow black, fishing boat-bobbing sea.” – “Under Milk Wood”, Thomas employs the repetition of the ‘b’ sound to create the short round motion of a gentle rocking boat. |
| Anaphora | The repetition of a phrase or word at the beginning of multiple sentences. | “It will be a skyscraper…/ It will be the smallest, most picturesque cottage…. / No one eats while others go hungry / No lying awake…” Wei Wei Lo’s “Home” utilises anaphora to emphasise her connection to the dream of a perfect home. She repeats ‘will’ and ‘no’ alternatively to capture the dream of a place that is peaceful and could be simultaneously urban and rural. |
| Anecdote | A personal story, often used in persuasive or discursive writing, to give insight into the composer and evoke pathos. | “Dear Mrs. Dunkley”: “In 1952, when I was nine and my name was Helen Ford…” Garner cleverly employs personal anecdote throughout to create a deep sense of the personal in her reflection on time, illness through her relationship with an old teacher. |
| Assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds in a sentence. It creates a soft resonance or “a bad rhyme” as it is put in My Fair Lady. | “Full of sour marsh and broken boughs” – Slessor’s “Wild Graphs” utilises the repetition of the “our” diphthong (a vowel with two sounds) to elongate the rhythm and evoke a sense of empty sournessness. |
| Atmosphere | The mood of a piece – it is described using words of feeling, and is created by other techniques including sensory imagery. | “”Its contours remind you of love / That soft roundness / The comfort of ocean and landmass” Kae Tempest’s “Picture a Vacuum” employs the overall atmosphere of a vacuum and space to transport the reader. These conjuring of soft sounds and imagery evoke a gentle atmosphere. |
| Characterisation | The qualities and actions of the characters in a text; how they are made to be fleshed out drivers of action. Created with a variety of techniques including internal dialogue and dialogue. | In “The Tempest” Caliban is characterised by the other characters as “savage” and beastly. However, his connection with the Island is revealed through his own descriptions of it and his hostel interactions with Prospero and Miranda are equally revealing of his disempowered character. Shakespeare uniquely charactersises Caliban by most of his dialogue being written in poetry, creating a complex dimension to his character as he speaks in the same tongue as his colonisers: “You taught me language, and my profit on ’tIs I know how to curse. The red plague rid youFor learning me your language!” |
| Collective pronouns | The use of “we”, “us”, to create a sense of unity between author and audience and/or represent a collective. | Pearson in “Eulogy for Gough Whitlam” expresses his appreciation for Whitlam’s work at reconciliation with collective pronouns: “Without this old man the land and human rights of our people would never have seen the light of day.” He represents himself as a voice for First Nations people with collective pronouns to emphasise the impact Whitlam had on not just individuals but entire populations as a leader and law maker. |
| Connotations – Negative and positive | The associations with a word, what we think of outside of its literal definition. This can be employed for specific audiences, but also broken down into negative and positive connotations. | In her poem “The Surfer” Wright imbues the sea with negative connotations to create a tonal shift, “For on the sand the grey-wolf sea lies, snarling,” The description of “snarling” evokes anger and malice implying the ocean is no longer the joyous place it was. |
| Contrast | Putting two things side by side to reinforce their differences . | “Were we lead all that way for / Birth or Death? … I had seen birth and death” Elliot’s “The Journey of the Magi” uses contrast to bring to the fore his central theme of the painful nature of spiritual rebirth. The poem in its last stanza heavily contrasts birth and death, in earlier stanzas also contrasting seasons (winter and summer) and tones (folly, joy and pain and agony). |
| Cumulative listing | The use of three or more verbs, nouns or adjectives in a row – creates a list that emphasises or shows diversity. | “The soothing aromas / oof Pho and lychee tea; that familiar / crescendo of rickshaws / bicycles and scooters; / landscapes of water buffalo” – Pham in “Mother” employs cumulative listing to capture his mother’s homeland of Vietnam. The list quickly evokes a series of sharp, clear images to evoke place. |
| Derogatory | Language that is used to hurt and abuse. Usually phrases directed at a particular group or person intending to cause harm. | Henry Lawson’s short stories carry the vernacular of their times, in the Drover’s wife the character “Black Mary” is described as “the whitest gin in all the land”. The use of the derogatory term “gin” to describe the Aboriginal character is reflective of the inherent racist attitudes of the time. |
| Dialogue | The exchange between two or more people spoken aloud, represented by quotation marks and dialogue tags (said, whispered, yelled, etc). The effect is a quick way to represent relationships, character and/or launch into action. | “If yer bit” says Tommy, after a pause, “you’ll swell up, an smell, an turn red and green an blue all over, till yer bust.” Lawson skillfully captures the voice of Tommy the eldest son in “The Drover’s Wife” conveying both the way he speaks (dropping his ‘d’s) and his knowledge of the consequences of a snake bite. |
| Diction | “Word choice”: this is created through a variety of techniques not limited to but including connotations, slang or jargon and tone. | Smith in “That Crafty Feeling” uses distinct diction in “I can’t stand to hear them speak about all this, not because I disapprove, but because other people’s methods are always so incomprehensible and horrifying. I am a Micro Manager.” She combines a formal tone with a long adjective filled sentence to contextualise her point and then contrasts this with a short sharp sentence and her own term “Micro Manager” capitalised. |
| Direct address | Use of second person pronouns “you” to speak directly to the audience. Creates a sense of immediate connection which can be used to influence, especially in persuasive pieces. | “You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.” Rowling in “The Fringe Benefits of failure” addresses her speech directly to the audience, giving strength to her advice to the graduates. |
| Emotive language | Words that capture emotions – they are often used in connection to Pathos. | Judith Wright’s “The Surfer” employs emotive language through words like “joy” and “delight” in the first stanza to capture the mood of an afternoon surfing in the sun. |
| Enjambment | A poetic technique, running a sentence over two lines so a break occurs mid sentence. It keeps the sentence running and breaks the rhythm of a regular clause. | “They tried to fool me around because I couldn’tSpeak “Anguish””Yu employs enjambment in his poem to create a broken rhythm, placing audiences in the position of a speaker whose first language is not English. |
| Ethos | A rhetorical appeal, used in persuasive texts, that establishes the credibility or trustworthiness of the author. This creates a bond between composer and audience. | Rowling employs ethos in relating her commencement address back to her own experience of graduation, stating “I have asked myself what I wished I had known at my own graduation”, thus establishing a link between her as a former student of Harvard and her audience. |
| Flashback and Flashforward | A shift in time to the past, to provide more context to a character or situation, or create a nuanced form. A flashforward is a shift in time to the future, often used to create suspense for the audience by revealing part of the plot’s outcome. | In “The Drover’s Wife” Lawson employs flashbacks as the protagonist recalls the many trials she has lived through. All of them are intense and so captured through flashbacks the audience feels the severity of the conditions she lives in. |
| Foreshadowing | When a text preempts what will happen through inferences, atmosphere and tone. Foreshadowing is often ambiguous and so creates feelings of suspense and investment in the reader to discover the plot’s details. | Shakespeare employs strong foreshadowing in his work, for example in Richard III, Richard describes himself determined to prove himself “a villain” foreshadowing his ill behaviour in the rest of the play. |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration! Emphasises the impact, or feeling of a situation by taking it beyond realty. Often created with metaphor. | “She smiles an eternal smile” – in “Mother” Vuong emphasises the impact his mother had on him with the notion that her influence is ‘eternal’, with no beginning and no end. |
| Internal dialogue | The thoughts inside a character’s head. It gives perspective and characterisation into the way in which they think and what they feel. Can be created with techniques including diction, slang and modality. | “Oh god!” he thought, “what a strenuous career it is that I’ve chosen! Travelling day in and day out.” – Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” captures its protagonist’s discontented thoughts with his work employing internal dialogue. |
| Jargon | Words specific to a profession, skillset or field of work. It creates specificity and can denote knowledge specific to characters and/or the target audience, it is similar to slang. | Lawson’s short stories use jargon in association with the life in the bush in 19th century Australia, Terms like “drovers” “swagmen”, “bushwoman” “yarn” and “”sundowner” all capture the terms and specificities of the era. |
| Juxtaposition | The same as contrast, placing two things side by side to emphasise their differences. | “Not with a bang but with a whimper” is an iconic line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”, that juxtaposes the expectations of apocalypse and high stakes drama for the world’s end with the underwhelming reality he perceives of slow and insidious decay. |
| Logos | A rhetorical appeal, used in persuasive texts, that establishes the logic of an argument. It evokes trust in audiences and clarity of understanding. | Jobs’ speech is laid out in three clear anecdotes which he introduces at the beginning of his text, “Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.” It establishes a clear, logical order to his address. |
| Metaphor | Comparing two things saying one thing is another – similar effect to a simile but with greater abstraction.. | “Let’s dig up the soil and excavate the past” / “excavation holes are dug in our minds” In “The Past” Eckerman utilises the metaphor of excavation to explore her message to unpack history and the ongoing impacts of the past. |
| Modality – high or low | The confidence of language used. High modality is very forward and strong, low modality is less certain. | Jobs in “How to Live Before You Die” uses high modality language to reinforce his central argument – “your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” He clearly instructs his audience to take life by the reins and offers no room to doubt his advice through the confidence of his address. |
| Motif | When a symbol is repeated throughout a text, reinforcing the ideas it represents and is exploring. | Geraldine Brooks’ speech “A Home in Fiction” uses the motif of a home and words to represent her identity as a writer and how they occupy her life. “And now, as I make my home in literature” / “You can move the furniture about as much as you like; the emotions of the people in the room will not change.” |
| Natural imagery | Similar to sensory imagery; using the sense to describe the natural world. It evokes location, tone and can symbolise key ideas. | “Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. / The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch, / But that the sea, mounting to the welkin’s cheek, / Dashes the fire out.”Shakespeare in the “Tempest” conjures many natural images to impact audiences with the powers of the elements in contrast with humanity. |
| Onomatopoeia | Words that represent the sounds they are making – they build interest and quickly convey noise in the written form. | “And the foam and splash of departure.” – from Dobson’s “Summer’s End” generates the sounds of the waves in the summer. |
| Oxymoron | When two words directly contradict each other to create a new meaning that doesn’t make complete logical sense. | “That in their harsh sweetness remind me somehow” – Slessor employs harsh and sweet side by side to capture the tumultuous relationship of the persona with the subject, Isabella, in his work “Wild Grapes”. |
| Pathos | A rhetorical appeal, as constructed by Aristotle, often used in persuasive texts, pathos evokes the emotion of the audience. Often created with emotive language, sensory imagery and/or symbolism. | “Only those who have known discrimination truly know its evil”. Whitlam uses powerful emotive language to highlight the emotional weight of the discriminatory policies and prejudices of Australia’s history. |
| Paradox | The connecting of two ideas that are inherently contradictory. It creates a cognitive dissonance to arrive at a new idea. | “Fair is foul / and foul is fair” Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” employs paradox in this line of the witches, capturing the moral grey spaces that the play explores. |
| Personification | Giving an object or animal human qualities – the effect is to gather human empathy by making it more relatable. | “China, the woman / Stands tall / breasts heavy with the milk of her labours” – Noonuccal in “China…Woman” personifies the whole country of China as a pregnant woman to emphasise the hope and possibility, like that of a newborn child, the country holds. |
| Plosives | Explosive consonant sounds made by the rapid release of air – “p”, “b” “d” “k” “ch” “g” are all plosives. The effect is short and sharp. | “sloe black, slow, black, crow black,” of Thomas’ work employs the plosive of “b” as a spoken text. It is important in creating auditory rhythm and an explosive sort of sound to the work. |
| Pun | A play on words where one word has a double meaning in the context of the sentence. Often used to create humour and layers of meaning. | “With their English, / And my Anguish” – Yu in “New Accents” employs the pun of “anguish” to say “english” to capture how a non native speaker to english would pronounce the word and simultaneously convey the difficulties and barriers of not being fluent in the language of the place that you live. |
| Repetition | Repeating a word or phrase two or more times to provide emphasis. | “There will be time, there will be time, / to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet…” Elliot’s utilisation of repetition in “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” demonstrates repetition used skillfully on multiple fronts. He creates a distinct rhythm and emphasises the key ideas of time, faces and meeting. |
| Rhetorical question | Often used in persuasive pieces, a question asked of the audience without the expectation of an answer. Effect is to provoke thought without needing the form of a discussion. | “(bad females) exist in life, so why shouldn’t they exist in literature?” – Margaret Atwood’s “Spotty Handed Villainesses” poses this rhetorical question to its readers. Her central theme of good/evil dichotomy is put to her audience in this rhetorical question. |
| Sensory Imagery – Auditory – Gustatory – Olfactory – Visual – Tactile | Description using five senses; auditory imagery is hearing, gustatory imagery is taste, olfactory imagery is smell. Visual imagery is sight, and tactile imagery is touch. The effect of using these creates a better understanding of the world we are building or reading about. | “The smell is huge,blasting the mouth dry:the tons of rotten newspaper, and great cuds of cloth . . .” Gray’s “Flames and Dangling Wire” conjures the experience of a rubbish dump with confronting starkness, evoking the smell and the impact on the persona’s physicality coupled with the image of the waste. |
| Sibilance | Repetition of the ‘s’ consonant in a sentence. It creates a smooth sound as ‘s’ is a fricative sound (a slow release of air between the tongue and roof of the mouth) and so elongated. | “Sweeps in a flood the sun-hats and the surfboards,The spotted scarves and the sunshades striped like candy,” – Dobson in “Summer’s End” creates a content atmosphere of summer through the repeated ‘s’ sound. |
| Simile | Comparing two things using “like” or “as” – the effect links two images/ideas/things – mostly for descriptive effect. | “The houses are blind as moles” – Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood” is studded with similes to evoke evocative and often humorous images. The houses are blind as they are shrouded in the darkness of the night. |
| Slang | Informal language specific to a certain group or demographic. It conveys the nuance of location, character and can also communicate world view. | Lawson’s short stories are full of Australian slang, using “old man/lady”/ “swagmen”, “drover” “yarn” to create the specific time and individuals of his outback Australian stories. |
| Superlative | A description that takes something to its furthest extreme. | “The notion of some infinitely gentle /Infinitely suffering thing.” – From Elliot’s “Preludes” which through the repetition of “infinitely” emphasises the furthest extremes of industrialisation. |
| Symbolism | When an object, character, location, etc represents an abstract idea. The effect is to ground abstraction and convey it in something more concrete. | Ted Hughes employs a lot of symbolism in his work. His poem “The Shot” utilises the image of a “high velocity bullet”throughout to represent Plath – conveying the emotional force of their relationship as equivalent to being shot conveying the wounding and hurt that it encompassed. |
| Tone | Similar to atmosphere, however it is also related to our relationship with the audience. Tone is often described as formal or informal/casual and is created by our choice of diction. | Hadden in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NIghttime” establishes the protagonist, Christopher’s tone, through his first person address and inclusion of long detailed sentences and prime numbers as chapter numbers reflecting Christopher’s love of mathematics and order. |
| Truncated sentences | Short sentences. They can emphasise high emotion and/or create a rapid or broken rhythm on the page. | “My god, he can’t even name it, thinks Luke in a spasm of bitter scorn. Typical.” Lohrey employs the truncated sentence within the character’s internal dialogue to capture the high emotion he is experiencing. The singular word ‘typical’ reflects the quick harshness of a spasm of anger. |
| Zoomorphism | Like personification but instead assigning animal attributes to a human, idea, or object. | “Suddenly he is an insect, mere vermin.” Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” employs the transformation of his protagonist into vermin to represent his central themes of degraded human life under capitalism. |
Extension Techniques
These techniques are rarer and harder to understand and implement. However, if you can learn these and begin using them in your analysis and own compositions, they will extend your work to top band material!
| Technique | Definition and Effect | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Allegory | When a text is representing another story through an extended metaphor. Often these texts have strong moral messages and by placing them in a different context or basing them in different subject matter it gives audiences a greater chance to engage with them. | George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is a notable example of allegory; employing the farm as a representation of Stalanist Russia. By placing the same power dynamics in an imagined setting, Orwell homes into the key themes authoritarianism, power and corruption. |
| Allusion – Cultural – Historical – Religious – Biblical – Literary – Mythical | When a text makes reference to an aspect of religion, history or culture to layer upon and strengthen its meaning. Allusions often offer context to a work by placing it in relation to other aspects of society. | Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” utilises allusion on multiple fronts to religious references to the story of Lazarus and addresses to God, the myth of the phoenix, “out of the ash I rise with my red hair” and historical allusions to Nazis, “bright as a Nazi lampshade.” |
| Anadiplosis | When the last word/phrase of one sentence is repeated at the beginning of the next. It is a form of repetition and so emphasises the ideas. However it more powerfully links the clauses by connecting the last idea of one to the beginning of the next. | Keat’s in ‘The Eve of St Agnes” employs anadiplosis in “Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith. /His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man:”The anadiplosis of “prayer he saith” echoes the qualities of prayer as repeated and illustrate the dedicated status of the subject. |
| Asyndeton | The omission of conjunctions in a sentence and replacing them with commas. It makes a piece more concise and takes out any confusion of meaning. | Shakespeare employs asyndeton in Othello in Iago’s speech, ““Call up her father./Rouse him. Make after him,/ Poison his delight,/Proclaim him in the streets. /Incense her kinsmen,” to build the momentum of Iago’s ill intended list of provocations towards Brabantio. |
| Character foil | Often a theatrical device, creating two characters who serve as each other’s opposite. Each of them has the qualities the other does not, thus by contrast strengthening their characterisation. | Caliban and Ariel in “The Tempest” are character foils, as Ariel is personified as airy and light and Caliban is of the earth and rough. |
| Circular structure | When a narrative begins and ends at the same point: this could be the same setting, the same event in time, the same imagery or motif. Thus the structure is circular and non linear. | “Waiting for Godot” is a famous example of a circular structure beginning and ending with the two tramps onstage with the tree. The formic choice emphasises Beckett’s exploration of time, change and human control over their own fates. |
| Counter argument | A rhetorical device presenting the other side of an argument in a persuasive piece in order to take it apart and prove your argument stronger. | “Because the Great War was a and brutal, awful struggle… because the waste of human life was so terrible that some said victory was scarcely discernible from defeat… we might think this Unknown soldier died in vain.” By acknowledging the brutalities of war, Keating makes his argument more powerful with counter argument by taking time to debunk criticisms of his position. |
| Epigraph | A short quotation at the beginning of a book or chapter that is reflective of its themes. | Atwood’s “Hag-Seed” includes an epigraph of Charles Dicken’s words, Percy Shelley and Francis Bacon. All the quotes point to the various themes in the text and provoke the reader to contemplate where they will find them in the following text. |
| Epistolary form | Relating to letters. If a text is constructed entirely out of the letter form or includes elements of it. It can act as a device to include different perspectives in a text, and provide readers with quick insights as letters are often of a personal and private nature. | Haddon in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” employs epistolary elements in the inclusion of Chirstopher’s mother’s letters within the book. These letters give the audiences access to her voice and perspective instead of through Christopher or his father’s eyes. |
| Epistrophe | The repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive sentences/clauses. It is the opposite of anaphora and puts the weight of the clause into the repeated subject. | Lincoln’s Gettysburg address demonstrates a famous employment of epistrophe, “”…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” |
| Genre | The style a text is written in and the predetermined conventions of that style. Authors can break the conventions of genre or innovate with how they are presented. | “The Pedestrian” is an iconic example of a science fiction text, employing the conventions of a dystopian police run world and hyper developed technology. |
| Hyperbaton | A device which inverts the normal order of words in a sentence, often used for the emphasis of a particular word. It is often used in poetic texts. | Shakespeare’s work uses a lot of hyperbaton to conform with his metre. In the Tempest Prospero speaks of his former trust of Antonio “Of all the world I loved and to him put / the manage of my state” to begin the phrase with the main idea of the entire world equating to his love. |
| Hypophora | Like a rhetorical question however the speaker poses the question and then answers it. It drives to a more immediate idea or message and creates a rhythm of question, answer. | “No. What is Honour? A word. What is that word ‘honour’? Air.“ Shakespeare in Henry IV has Falstaff iconically muse on the abstract nature of honour, posing his challenges to it and then answering with the metaphor of air to emphasise his feelings that it is useless in their circumstances. |
| In media res | Beginning “in the middle of things”, this technique propels the plot into the action, quickening the pace and getting rid of unnecessary detail or exposition. | “The Tempest” begins in media res as the storm is taking place, years after the events of Antonio’s betrayal and their subjugation onto the island. |
| Intertextual reference | When a text references another text to enhance its meaning and connect themes and ideas. The employment of intertextuality demonstrates the field that the text sits in by acknowledging what has come before and adds layers of complexity. | “And 38 years later we are like John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin’s Jewish insurgents ranting against the despotic rule of Rome, defiantly demanding “and what did the Romans ever do for us anyway?”” Pearson’s Eulogy for Gough Whitlam makes a humorous intertextual reference to the group Monty Python and their work “Life of Brian” to capture the foolishness of Australian society complaining about Whitlam’s legacy. |
| Metonymy | When a word or name is used in place of something it’s closely related to. It substitutes the bigger thing and is often used for poetic effect. | “English tongue” demonstrates how the tongue – a part of speech and speaking comes to represent the whole of a language. |
| Multimodal | The employment of multiple modes (text, audio, visual, physical, interactive) to create layers of meaning. Each form has generally accepted modes, so to combine these in different ways can make a text more experimental. | In “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” Haddon employs small graphics within the text, adding a visual mode to convey the images that protagonist Christopher learns emotions from. “Eight years ago, when I first met Siobhan, she showed me this picture [coupled with a picture of a sad face]” |
| Parody | When a text imitates a certain style of text to satirise it. It will often employ exaggeration to make obvious the characteristics it wishes to unpick. Often humorous. | In “Nineteen Eighty-Four” Orwell’s protagonist finds a text called “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism”. This fictional text that pairs the idea of an oligarchy (a small ruling class) with collectivism is a parody of the manifestos and treaties written by revolutionaries such as Lenin and Trotsky. The pairing of these contradictory ideas demonstrates Orwell’s criticism of communist treatise and vague ideals. |
| Pathetic Fallacy | When the weather is used to reflect the mood of the characters. It creates a strong sense of atmosphere and conveys the characters’ emotions more subtly. | In “Past the Shallows” Parrett employs the ocean as pathetic fallacy to the abusive father’s tempers. When he is violent the ocean is often surging and dangerous, reflecting the feeling that the sons cannot escape the cycles of violence they live in. |
| Polysyndeton | When multiple repetitions of the same conjunction (and, but, if etc) are used in replacement of commas. It extends the sentence out and emphasises each new item that is being connected. | Shakespeare often employs polysyndeton, in Othello for example, “If there be cords, or knives, Poison, or fire, or suffocating streams, I’ll not endure it.” Each harmful implement is emphasised by the conjunction “or”. |
| Sonnet | A poem of fourteen lines, using any number of rhyme schemes. Often in English sonnets there are ten syllables per line. | Shakespeare has a series of well known sonnets. |
| Synesthesia | When one sense is described using the language of another – blurring the senses. Synesthesia occurs often within metaphors and similes. | Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray, “his words cut the air like a dagger” demonstrates how a classic simile also employs synesthesia. Words are a heard sense, however, this phrase makes them tactile, imparting the hurt and shock they have. |
| Synecdoche | A form of metonymy; it is when part of something is used to represent its whole. | “Speak an unbroken English tongue” – Vuong in “Mother” employs the common phrase of “tongue” that represents the language spoken, the singular of the tongue is used to represent the whole of a spoken language. |
| Tricolon | A rhetorical device for the series of three parallel words phrases or clauses. Also known as the rule of threes it is agreed in rhetoric that three is a satisfying number to humans – it feels complete. | Jobs employs tricolon in his speech, “It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture”, emphasising the importance calligraphy had on his career. |
| Unreliable narrator | When the narrative voice of a text is purposefully inconsistent in its details and presentation of the plot. This is often used to reveal the character’s own stake in the events unfolding and create a sense of uncertainty in the audience as to what is true. | “An Artist of the Floating World” features a distinct unreliable narrator as Ishiguro explores how the human psyche deals with dramatic events and reconstructs timelines and events. |
Final Thoughts / Conclusion
With this extensive list of techniques you should be able to analyse any text you come across! Remember always to consider what unique effect each different technique has – why did the author choose it to convey their meaning? With this consideration you’ll improve your analysis dramatically. Happy studying!