Tag Archives: term of art

Term of Art: Exposition

Posted on December 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Exposition: Exposition, or expository writing, is traditionally understood as writing that aims to transmit information to presumably interested parties as distinguished from writing that aims to persuade the reader. As there will be elements of persuasive writing in expository, so also will there be elements of the expository in persuasive.

In the following discussion, however, the perspective is that of rhetorical analysis, which regards all written communication (including the note on the refrigerator door) as guided by a communicative/persuasive purpose. Exposition is, then, that type of prose writing that attempts to create, in its target audience, the attitude that the writer is objectively presenting the facts relative to a given subject. Exposition thus is not a division of prose discourse according to intent, but rather represents a tone that the writer wishes the reader to accept as ‘factual.’ The writer of exposition cultivates a tone designed to allow (encourage) the reader to think that the writer has no specific interest in, or position in regard to, the subject matter presented.

Excerpted from: Trail, George Y. Rhetorical Terms and Concepts: A Contemporary Glossary. New York: Harcourt Brace, 2000.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , , ,

Commodification

Posted on December 2, 2019 | Leave a comment

“commodification: A term derived from Marxist analyses of the social forces that guide the production and sale of products, or commodities. Since the Renaissance, artworks have been commodities paid for by religious or royal patrons. By the 20th century, art production had become entangled in a complex web composed of collectors, auction houses, galleries, and museums. In the tradition of Dada, 1960s artists feeling constrained by increasing commercialism sought to create unmarketable works, giving rise to conceptual, political, performance, and earth art. Recent artists concerned with issues of originality, authorship, and camp, are indirectly addressing issues of commodification and canon formation.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , , ,

Term of Art: Annales School

Posted on December 2, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Annales School: An influential school of French historians, formed around the journal Annales: economies, societes, civilisations, which was founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch at the University of Strasburg in 1929. The Annales School attempted to develop a ‘total history’ as a critique of existing historical methodology which offered only a chronology of events. They turned attention away from political history towards a macro-historical analysis of societies over long time-periods. The Annales School, which included Maurice Halbwachs, Andre Siegfried, Fernand Braudel, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, and Georges Duby, had the following characteristics: it was interdisciplinary; it was concerned to study very long historical periods (la longue duree) and social structure; some members of the School employed quantitative methods; they examined the interaction between geographical environment, material culture, and society.

The work of the original members is represented, for example, by Block who attempted a total analysis of medieval society in his Feudal Society (1961). In the post-war period two works in particular have been very influential in the social science, namely Braudel’s study of the Mediterranean (The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 1949) and Le Roy Ladurie’s analysis of fourteenth-century village life (Montaillou, 1975). The School has influenced historical sociology, especially the world-system theory of Immanuel Wallerstein (see, for example, his two-volume study of The Modern-World System, 1974 and 1980) Critics have argued that the Annales School neglected political processes. Nor is it clear how the Annales approach was fundamentally different in scope and interdisciplinarity from, for example, historical materialism, the historical sociology of Max Weber in his The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilisations (1924), or the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias in The Court Society (1969)–although it tends to be less abstract then all of these.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , , ,

Term of Art: Anticlimax

Posted on November 22, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Anticlimax: According to Dr. Johnson’s definition (and he appears to have been the first to record the word) it is “a sentence in which the last part expresses something lower than the first.” In fact, a bathetic declension from a noble tone to one less exalted. The effect can be comic and is often intended to be so. A good example occurs in Fielding’s burlesque (q.v.), Tom Thumb:

King [Aruther, to his queen Dolallola]

…Whence flow those tears fast down thy blubber’d cheeks,

Like swoln Gutter, gushing through the streets?

The effect can also be unintentionally comic. There is a well-known example in Crashaw’s Saint Mary Magdelene, or the Weeper:

And now where e’er He Strays,

Among the Galilean Mountains,

Or more unwelcome ways,

He’s followed by two faithful fountains;

Two walking baths, two weeping motions;

Portable & compendious oceans.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference

Tagged , , ,

Term of Art: Apposition

Posted on November 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Apposition: Two consecutive, juxtaposed nouns or noun phrases are in apposition when they refer to the same person or thing, and when either can be omitted without seriously changing the meaning or the grammar of a sentence. Mrs. Thatcher and the British Prime Minister are in apposition in Mrs. Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, became leader of the Tory party in 1975. Here, both Mrs. Thatcher became leader…and The British Prime Minister became leader…could serve equally well alone. The term is often used when these criteria only partly apply, some grammarians using terms like partial or weak apposition to distinguish various types of lesser acceptability: ‘The heir to the throne arrived, Prince Charles’ (where only the second noun phrase can be omitted).

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , ,

Term of Art: Realpolitik

Posted on November 12, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Realpolitik: (Germ., politics of realism) Term coined in 1859 by the liberal journalist and historian Rochau, to describe Bismarck’s policy. Bismarck believed that a naked struggle for power and a ruthless pursuit of self-interest were the only realistic options for a great state.”

Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

Leave a comment

Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , ,

Term of Art: Euphony

Posted on November 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

“euphony: Literally the property of ‘sounding well.’ But used at one time of principle equivalent to that of ‘ease or articulation’: thus it was for reasons of ‘euphony’ that one consonant undergoes assimilation to another, or that successive syllables are matched in vowel harmony.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference

Tagged ,

Term of Art: Anecdote

Posted on November 6, 2019 | Leave a comment

“A brief account of or a story about an individual or an incident. The anecdotal digression is a common feature of narrative in prose and verse. In the history of English literature and of literary characters the anecdote has a specific importance. In his Dictionary Samuel Johnson defined the term as “something yet unpublished; secret history”. During the 18th century and interest in “secret” histories increased steadily, and no doubt there is some connection between this and the growing popularity of –ana, table-talk and biography (qq.v) at that time. During the second half of the 18th century there was almost a craze for “secret” histories. In the last thirty years of it over a hundred books of anecdotage were published in England. Isaac Disraeli, father of Benjamin, became one of the best known and most assiduous gleaners of anecdotes. In 1791 he published three volumes titled Curiosities of Literature, consisting of Anecdotes, Characters, Sketches, and Observations, Literary, Historical, and Critical. These he followed with other collections: Calamities of Authors (1812-1813) in two volumes, and Quarrels of Authors (1814) in three volumes. In 1812 John Nichols published the first of nine volumes in a series titled Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century. Such works remained popular during the Victorian period. Nor is the appetite for collections of anecdotes assuaged. In 1975 there was The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , ,

Term of Art: Rapport

Posted on November 1, 2019 | Leave a comment

“rapport n.: A sympathetic or harmonious relationship or state of mutual understanding. The word was introduced into psychology by the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), and the French psychologist and neurologist Pierre Janet (1859-1947) confined its meaning specifically to the relationship between a hypnotist and a hypnotized subject; then Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) eventually widened its meaning and described it as the prototype (2) of  the transference.

[From French rapporter, to bring back, from re-again and apportare, to carry to, from Latin apportare to bring to, from, ad to + portare to bring or carry]”

Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Leave a comment

Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , , , , ,

Term of Art: Orthographic Awareness

Posted on October 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

“orthographic awareness: An individual’s command of the sound-letter relationship,. As children learn to write, their approaches to spelling change as they become more aware of sounds and letters. In the beginning, children often spell very simply (such as ‘bt’ for ‘boat’). As they get older they may apply conventions of spelling but still misspell (‘bote’ for ‘boat’).

With more exposure to written language, as they become more proficient readers and learn specific spelling patterns, young writers begin to apply more sophisticated spelling patterns (‘boat’ for ‘boat’). Individuals with learning disabilities who have underdeveloped orthographic awareness often have problems with spelling.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , ,