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Catachresis – the inexact use of a similar word in place of the proper one to create an unlikely metaphor; for example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "The power of man is short" or "the long wisdom in the man". Charisma – an attribute that allows a speaker's words to become powerful.
Techniques that involve semantics and the choosing of words. Anglish: a writing using exclusively words of Germanic origin; Auto-antonym: a word that contains opposite meanings; Autogram: a sentence that provide an inventory of its own characters; Irony; Malapropism: incorrect usage of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with ...
Text world theory and schema theory seek to help people understand how we process language and create mental representations when we read or listen to something. [1] This theory figuratively describes a piece of language (such as a text, a speech or conversation) as a "world" that the reader, hearer or interlocutor must "build" in their mind. [2]
It can be said then that mutual knowledge, co-text, genre, speakers, hearers create a neurolinguistic composition of context. [ 3 ] Traditionally, in sociolinguistics , social contexts were defined in terms of objective social variables, such as those of class, gender, age or race.
The way words are often used together. For example, “do the dishes” and “do homework”, but “make the bed” and “make noise”. Colloquialism A word or phrase used in conversation – usually in small regions of the English-speaking world – but not in formal speech or writing: “Like, this dude came onto her real bad.”
If separating words using spaces is also permitted, the total number of known possible meanings rises to 58. [38] Czech has the syllabic consonants [r] and [l], which can stand in for vowels. A well-known example of a sentence that does not contain a vowel is Strč prst skrz krk, meaning "stick your finger through the neck."
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men"). During the Renaissance, scholars meticulously enumerated and classified figures of speech.