English Literary Terms

1. Auto-Biography: -is the history of ones life written by one self.

2. Act: - is the major division of a drama.
3. Antithesis: -is contrast or polarity in meaning.
4. Allusion: -is a reference to an idea, place, person or text existing outside the
literary work.
5. Allegory: - is a literary work that has an implied meaning.
6. Alliteration:-the repetition of a consonant in two or more words.
7. Ballad: -is a song which tells a story.
8. Biography: -is the history of a persons life by one else.
9. Blank Verse: -Verses written in iambic pentameter without any rhyme pattern
are called blank verse.
10. Comedy:-is a play written to entertain its audience, ends happily.
11. Classical:-means any writing that conforms to the rules and modes of old
Greek and Latin writings.
12. Canto:-is a sub-division of an epic or a narrative poem comparable to a chapter
in a novel.
13. Chorus:-is a group of singers who stand alongside the stage in a drama.
14. Catharsis:-is emotional release of pity and fear that the tragic incidences in a
tragedy arouse to an audience.
15. Comic relief:-a humorous scene in a tragedy to eliminate the tragic effect from
audience.
16. Couplet:-To lines of the same material length usually found in Shakespearean
sonnets.
17. Catastrophe:-Catastrophe is the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy.
18. Didactic:-is a literary work which aims at teaching and instructing its readers.
19. Dirge:-is a short functional term.
20. Diction:-is the selection of words in literary work.
21. Dialect:-is the language of particular district; class or a group of people.
22. Drammatical Monologue:-In a poem when a single person speaks along with or
without an audience is called drammatical monologue. Example My last
Duchess-----Br
owning.
23. Difference between drama and novel:-A drama is meant to be performed
whereas a novel is meant to be read.
24. Difference between stanza and paragraph:-A stanza contains verses whereas a
paragraph contains prosaic lines.
25. Epic:-is a long narrative poem composed on a grand scale and is exalted style.
Example Paradise Lost-------Milton.
26. Epilogue:-is the concluding part of a longer poem or a novel or a drama.
27. Fable:-is a brief story illustrating a moral.
28. Farce:-A form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter.
29. Foot:-A basic unit of meter.
30. Fiction:-A fiction is an imaginative narrative in prose e.g.
Lord of the flyby Golding.
31. Elegy:- is a poem mourning to the death of an individual or a lament for a
tragic event.
32. Genre:-means category or types of literature-epic, ode, ballad etc.
33. Hyperbole:-An overstatement or exaggeration.
34. Image:-is the mental picture connected with metaphor, smile and symbol.
35. Limerick:-is a short poem of a five-line stanza rhyming aaba.
36. Lyric:-A lyric is a short poem expressing a simple mood. It is usually personal
and musical e.g. Keatss odes.
37. Linguistic:-is the scientific and systematic study of language.
38. Melodrama:-A highly sensational drama with happy ending.
Example The Spanish Tragedy Kyd.
39. Metaphysical Poetry:-Meta means beyond and physical is related to body . . . . .
....
40. Mock-epic:-It is a long satirical poem dealing with a trivial theme. Example:
The rape of the lock-Alexander Pope.
41. Metaphor:-A metaphor is an implicit comparison between two different things.
42. Metre:-The recurrence of similar stress pattern in some lines of a poem.
43. Novel:-is a long prose narrative fiction with plot, characters, etc.
44. Novelette:-is longer than a short story and shorter than a novel.
45. Ode:-is a long narrative poem of varying, line length dealing with serious
subject matter.
46. Objectivity:-We have objectivity in a literary piece when the author focuses on
an object from broadened point of view.
47. Octave:-is the firs part of Italian sonnet.
48. Oxymoron:-is apparently a physical contrast which oddly makes sense on a
deeper level.
49. Prologue:-is the beginning part of a novel or a play or a novel.
50. Prose:-Any material that is not written in a regular meter like a poetry.
51. Prosody:-Prosody is the mechanics or grammar of verse.
52. Protagonist:-Protagonist is the main character in a literary work
53. Plot:-The arrangement of incidents is called plot.
54. Pun:-A pun is playing with words.
55. Periods of English literature:-The Anglo-Saxon, Middle English Renaissance,
Restoration, Neoclassical Romantic,
Victorian, Modern, Post-Modern.
56. Romanticism:-was a literary movement. It stands Opposite to reason and
focuses on emotion.
57. Rhetoric:-Rhetoric is the art of persuasive argument through writing.
58. Symbol:-A symbol is anything that stands for something else.
59. Sonnet:-is a lyric poem consisting of fourteen rhymed lines dealing with a lofty
theme.
60. Satire:-is ridiculing the vices and follies of an individual or a society with a
corrective design. E.g. The rape of the lock---Pope.
#BASICS_OF_LINGUISTICS
What is allophone and phoneme?
An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language.
Examples
[p] and [pH] are allophones of the phoneme /p/
[t] and [tH] are allophones of the phoneme /t/
What is Morphology?
Morphology is the Branch of Linguistics that studies the Structure of words.
Morphology deals with the syntax of complex words.
What is Morpheme and Homomorphs?
The smallest sign in a language (the smallest form with specific meaning) and
Homomorphs Morphemes with the same form but different meanings for example
worker and teacher.
What is Free Morphs and bound Morphemes?
What is IPA? (international Phonetics Association).
The most widely used system for representing the sounds of any language.
(international Phonetics Association).
12.What is Syllable?
a unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding
consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word; for example, there are two
syllables in water and three in inferno.
WHAT IS MAXIM OF QUALITY?
Grice's Maxims, The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not
give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
What is maxim of quantity?
The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can,
and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
What is characteristic of Human Language?
language is a social tool. language must be learned. language has rules. Language
identifies culture .Language is a means of communication. Language is a social
phenomenon. Language is unique, creative, complex and modifiable. Language is
arbitrary. By the arbitrariness of language, we mean: there is no inherent or logical
relation or similarity between any given feature of language and its meaning.
What is Six Properties of language?
The six unique properties of language are as follows:
1. Displacement
2. Productivity or Creativeness
3. Discreteness
4. Arbitrariness
5. Duality
6. Cultural transmission
What is language?
a system of communication used by a particular country or community is called
language.
what are the Functions of Human language?
According to Halliday human language has three functions:
1. Communication: language is here to allow people to communicate. We use
language to express our thoughts.
2. The Ideational function: it allows human to give and represent the word around
then in good manner.
3. The interpersonal function: it allows people to communicate wand establish
social relations. And these are some of its sub-functional.
4. The informative function: to share information and knowledge
5.Directive function:
The expressive/emotive function:
The phatic function
6. Textual function:
7. Language as an instrument of social control.
What is Linguistics?
the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of grammar,
syntax, and phonetics. Specific branches of linguistics include sociolinguistics,
dialectology, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, comparative linguistics,
and structural linguistics.
What is Branches of linguistics?
Main Branches of linguistics, Phonetics, Phonology, morphology, Syntax,
Semantics, Pragmatics.
Name levels of Linguistics?
Overview: the main levels of linguistic description
Discourse (a discourse is the use of spoken or written language in a social context.
Pragmatics (study of meaning in context)
Semantics (the study of the meanings of words and phrases in language)
Syntax (study of sentence. Grammatical study of words is also known as Syntax)
Morphology (Morphology is the Branch of Linguistics that studies the Structure of
words. Morphology deals with the syntax of complex words)
Phonology (Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in
natural languages)
Phonetics (the study and classification of speech sounds)