“Political agitation and propaganda in literature, music, or art, especially pro-Communist doctrinairism.
‘I wonder if I should try to climb on the Women’s Lib bandwagon. First, I would have to change my name—Isabel Fairfax lacked the necessary agitprop crunch.’ Florence King, When Sisterhood Was in Flower.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged term of art
“An approach to reading instruction developed in the 1950s as an alternative to basic reading programs; emphasizes student selection of reading materials and self-pacing in reading. With this method, the teacher adjusts instruction to student needs during small-group work and in individual conferences.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“A feat of strength, skill, or craftsmanship; a notably well-executed work or production, sometimes one that is an exercise in technique or showmanship at the expense of other qualities. Plural: tours de force.
‘John Steinbeck and Saul Bellow became my special heroes a little later, as I decided I wanted to be a writer; and each, I notice now, chose to write a slapstick tour de force about a slaughter of the innocents in which the innocents were frogs.’”
Edward Hoagland, The New York Times
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, term of art
The other day, while rummaging around in a folder containing learning supports for English Language Arts lessons, I found this glossary of critical terms for use in English classes. I have no idea whence I excerpted this; the lack of citation troubles me. In any case, it is a list of conceptual terms mostly at the center of what English Language Arts teachers profess, and particularly, in many cases (aesthetic impact as a term of art comes immediately to mind) for advanced students.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“The smallest distinct sound unit in a given language: e.g. tip in English realizes three successive phonemes realized in spelling by the letters t, i, and p.
Detailed definitions have varied from one theory to another, But, in general, two words are composed of different phonemes only if they differ phonetically in ways that are found to make a difference in meaning. Thus in English i and a are difference phonemes since, for example, tip does not mean the same as tap, nor pit the same as pat. The individual phonemes are then the smallest units in each word that distinguish meanings and, in addition, are realized over distinct time spans. By the same criterion, i and a are single phonemes since they cannot be analyzed into smaller units meeting the criterion, each with its own time span.
Thence phonemic; e.g. a phonemic transcription of a word, etc. is its representation as a sequence or other combination of phonemes.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
“Education that emphasizes learning from firsthand, personal experiences rather than from lectures, books, and other secondhand sources. Experiential learning my take the form of internships, service learning, school-to-work programs, field studies, cross-cultural education, or training for leadership development.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“A ‘non-hero’ or the antithesis of a hero of the old-fashioned kind who was capable of heroic deeds, who was dashing, strong, brave and resourceful. It is a little doubtful whether such heroes have ever existed in any quantity in fiction except in some romances (q.v.) and in the cheaper kind of romantic novelette (q.v.). However, there have been many instances of fictional heroes who have displayed noble qualities and virtuous attributes. The anti-hero is the man who is given the vocation of failure.
The anti-hero—a type who is incompetent, unlucky, tactless, clumsy, cack-handed, stupid, buffoonish—is of ancient lineage and is to be found, for instance, in the Greek new comedy (q.v.). An early and outstanding example in European literature is the endearing figure of the eponymous knight of Don Quixote(1605-1615). But perhaps the first anti-heor who fits the modern image is Hylas, in d’Urfe’s very successful Astree (1627). Another notable instance is Tristram Shandy in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1760-1767). On can find isolated representatives in European from the 18thcentury onwards, for example Hasek’s Schweik in The Good Soldier Schweik (1920-23). A case could be argued that Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) is a kind of anti-hero. Charles Lumley in John Wain’s Hurry on Down (1953) is another. When Kingsley Amis created Jim Dixon in Lucky Jim (1954) the post-war anti-hero type was established, and the anti-hero Jimmy Porter of John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1957) produced a succession of personalities of the same kind. Other examples are Sebastien in J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man (1955). Herzog in Bellow’s Herzog (1964), and Yossarian in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 (1961). The principal male characters in several of Graham Greene’s novels are also anti-heroes.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Morphology: The study of the grammatical structure of words and the categories realized by them. Thus, a morphological analysis will divide girls into girl and –s; singer into sing and –er, which marks it as a noun referring to an agent.
A category is ‘morphological’ if it is realized within words. This morphological case is case as realized by different elements within nouns or words of other classes as opposed to an abstract case which might be realized differently or not at all. A morphological causative is a causative form of a verb as opposed to a causative construction, and so on.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
“Memory for figures, spatial relationships, and so on. Nonverbal memory is assumed to be based in the deep structures of the right temporal lobe.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“The practice of placing students with disabilities in regular classrooms in accordance with federal law. To the maximum extent possible, students with disabilities are supposed to be educated alongside their peers in regular education classrooms unless ‘the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily’ (P.L. 94-142020 U.S.C 1412 (5) (A)).”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
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