The Language of Composition

VOCABULARY LISTS IN THIS COLLECTION:

• Introducing Rhetoric: Using the "Available Means"

  Jump to activity:
  • rhetoric
  • audience
  • text
  • context
  • occasion
  • purpose
  • speaker
  • persona
  • subject
  • appeal
  • ethos
  • logos
  • counterargument
  • concession
  • refutation
  • pathos
  • propaganda
  • polemical
  • connotation

• Close Reading: The Art and Craft of Rhetorical Analysis

  Jump to activity:
  • diction
  • syntax
  • tone
  • mood
  • metaphor
  • simile
  • personification
  • hyperbole
  • parallelism
  • juxtaposition
  • antithesis
  • compound
  • cumulative
  • imperative
  • imagery
  • oxymoron
  • composition
  • background
  • line
  • shape
  • frame
  • foreground
  • thesis

• Analyzing Arguments: From Reading to Writing

  Jump to activity:
  • argument
  • claim
  • policy
  • counterargument
  • logical fallacy
  • red herring
  • ad hominem
  • analogy
  • straw man
  • equivocation
  • generalization
  • post hoc ergo propter hoc
  • quantitative
  • bandwagon
  • classical
  • oration
  • introduction
  • narration
  • exposition
  • confirmation
  • refutation
  • conclusion
  • induction
  • deduction
  • syllogism
  • warrant
  • assumption
  • backing
  • qualifier
  • reservation
  • rebuttal

• Additional Glossary Terms

  Jump to activity:
  • alliteration
  • allusion
  • anaphora
  • anecdote
  • annotation
  • archaic
  • assertion
  • asyndeton
  • beg the question
  • bias
  • exordium
  • figurative
  • focus
  • hortative
  • inversion
  • irony
  • metonymy
  • modifier
  • paradox
  • parallelism
  • peroration
  • polysyndeton
  • qualitative
  • rhetorical question
  • satire
  • stance
  • synecdoche
  • synthesis
  • synthesize
  • trope
  • understatement
  • wit
  • zeugma

• "In Defense of a Liberal Education" by Fareed Zakaria

  Jump to activity:
  • globalization
  • partisan
  • assimilate
  • humanities
  • glib
  • impart
  • fervent
  • imbue
  • trailblazer
  • integral
  • blitzkrieg
  • eclectic
  • apprehensive
  • malaise
  • hegemony

• "The Blessings of Liberty and Education" by Frederick Douglass

  Jump to activity:
  • chattel
  • germane
  • pecuniary
  • devolve
  • meritorious
  • nominally
  • menial
  • vocation
  • remunerative
  • avail
  • prerogative
  • apprehension
  • paragon
  • benighted
  • circumscribe
  • sublime
  • redress
  • despotic
  • emancipate
  • concomitant
  • transient
  • predicate
  • prate
  • reproach
  • opulent

• "Hip Hop Planet" by James McBride

  Jump to activity:
  • exploit
  • belittle
  • enigma
  • clarion
  • staccato
  • syncopation
  • dashiki
  • percussion
  • purview
  • alimony
  • affluent
  • decry
  • overt
  • indigenous
  • homage
  • unabashed
  • pittance
  • squalor
  • paltry
  • hallowed

• "Corn-Pone Opinions" by Mark Twain

  Jump to activity:
  • impudent
  • satirical
  • pretense
  • irreverent
  • conformity
  • diffuse
  • sordid
  • canvass
  • aggregation
  • boon

• "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson

  Jump to activity:
  • moribund
  • specter
  • impetuous
  • vernacular
  • barrage
  • ecologist
  • idealize
  • insipid
  • engender
  • entomologist
  • flagrant
  • indiscriminately
  • prudent
  • tranquilize
  • unpalatable

• "Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jump to activity:
  • sublime
  • envoy
  • admonish
  • indubitably
  • impertinent
  • blithe
  • occult
  • temperance
  • petulance
  • prodigal
  • firmament
  • mercenary
  • diffuse
  • din
  • corporeal
  • deify
  • divest
  • abdicate
  • ancillary
  • epitome

• "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Jump to activity:
  • forbearance
  • sanction
  • provincial
  • gainsay
  • moratorium
  • nonviolence
  • gadfly
  • segregationist
  • relegate
  • existential
  • sublime
  • precipitate
  • complacency
  • repudiate
  • incorrigible
  • agitator
  • manifest
  • Zeitgeist
  • latent
  • languish
  • admonish
  • pious
  • sanctimonious
  • nullification
  • laxity
  • nonconformist
  • mores
  • inextricably
  • profundity
  • scintillating

• "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" by Henry David Thoreau

  Jump to activity:
  • swath
  • sublime
  • clout
  • superfluous
  • founder
  • reckoning
  • unwieldy
  • supernumerary
  • sentinel
  • rudiment

• "The Silent Season of a Hero" by Gay Talese

  Jump to activity:
  • impeccable
  • repose
  • propriety
  • placid
  • undercurrent
  • nominal
  • pennant
  • paunchy
  • mystique
  • concede
  • boisterous
  • rove
  • homely
  • sinewy
  • carouse

• "How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle" by Frances Willard

  Jump to activity:
  • inveterate
  • prostration
  • mettlesome
  • temperance
  • blithesome
  • purport
  • trundle
  • conformable
  • apt
  • contrivance
  • contusion
  • perforated
  • aggregate
  • congenial
  • prerequisite

• "Serving in Florida" by Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jump to activity:
  • carrion
  • enigmatic
  • admonish
  • melange
  • reproach
  • disgorge
  • peckish
  • vindicate
  • purloin
  • conjugal
  • sumptuary
  • serf
  • emaciated
  • tortuous
  • miscreant
  • pro bono
  • loathsome
  • servile
  • congenial
  • milieu

• “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift

  Jump to activity:
  • importune
  • deplorable
  • raiment
  • rudiment
  • render
  • eminent
  • prolific
  • repine
  • discourse
  • deference
  • scrupulous
  • censure
  • expedient
  • digress
  • tithe
  • inducement
  • emulation
  • propagation
  • brevity
  • parsimony
  • prudence
  • temperance
  • faction
  • subsistence
  • overture

• "In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens" by Alice Walker

  Jump to activity:
  • croon
  • fallow
  • depraved
  • backwater
  • stifle
  • precarious
  • thwart
  • doting
  • instill
  • ambivalent
  • apt
  • matriarch
  • appellation
  • sharecropper
  • profusely

• "Professions for Women" by Virginia Woolf

  Jump to activity:
  • draught
  • wile
  • conciliate
  • befall
  • lethargy
  • disquiet
  • illusive
  • impede
  • nominally
  • formidable

• "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Jump to activity:
  • exonerated
  • abiding
  • inchoate
  • pedestrian
  • heretic
  • scion
  • mantra
  • inscrutable
  • incidental
  • machismo
  • edict
  • veneer
  • impart
  • dullard
  • rapture
  • exploit
  • render
  • windfall
  • unrepentant
  • lucrative

• "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau

  Jump to activity:
  • posterity
  • alacrity
  • expediency
  • palpitation
  • ado
  • redress
  • countenance
  • demagogue
  • hireling
  • gregarious
  • virile
  • requisition
  • discretion
  • conciliatory
  • foist
  • invidious
  • fatalist
  • propriety
  • rectitude
  • repose