AP Language and Composition Schemes, Tropes, and Fallacies
Paradox
A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense, but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity.
The first scene of Macbeth, for example, closes with the witches’ cryptic remark “Fair is foul, and foul is fair….”
Parallelism
Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related word, phrases, or clauses.
The basic principle of grammar and rhetoric demands that equivalent things be set forth in coordinate grammatical structures: nouns with nouns, infinitives with infinitives, and adverb clauses with adverb clauses.3
“...for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” (Declaration of Indep.)
“So Janey waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God)
“...the love of liberty, jury, trial, the writ of habeas corpus, and all the blessings of free government...” (“Speech on the Greek Cause”)
One obvious way to use parenthesis is to use the punctuation, parentheses. However, there are other ways to insert a comment into a sentence. One might use commas, or dashes, for example. The parenthetical remark, however, is off on the tangent, cut from the thrust of the sentence and grammatically unrelated to the sentence. contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: not like an arrow, but a boomerang.” (Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man)
“And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London; as if one’s friends were attached to one’s body...”
(Virginia Wolf, Mrs. Dalloway)
Zeugma
two different words linked to a verb or an adjective which is strictly appropriate to only one of them.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” –William Shakespeare’s Julius
A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense, but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity.
The first scene of Macbeth, for example, closes with the witches’ cryptic remark “Fair is foul, and foul is fair….”
Parallelism
Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related word, phrases, or clauses.
The basic principle of grammar and rhetoric demands that equivalent things be set forth in coordinate grammatical structures: nouns with nouns, infinitives with infinitives, and adverb clauses with adverb clauses.3
“...for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” (Declaration of Indep.)
“So Janey waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God)
“...the love of liberty, jury, trial, the writ of habeas corpus, and all the blessings of free government...” (“Speech on the Greek Cause”)
One obvious way to use parenthesis is to use the punctuation, parentheses. However, there are other ways to insert a comment into a sentence. One might use commas, or dashes, for example. The parenthetical remark, however, is off on the tangent, cut from the thrust of the sentence and grammatically unrelated to the sentence. contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: not like an arrow, but a boomerang.” (Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man)
“And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London; as if one’s friends were attached to one’s body...”
(Virginia Wolf, Mrs. Dalloway)
Zeugma
two different words linked to a verb or an adjective which is strictly appropriate to only one of them.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” –William Shakespeare’s Julius