Concept Defintions

Working Definitions for our course concepts. Defintions makred with an * are taken from Dictionary.com

• Critical Thinking:

The mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.*

• Interpretation:

An explanation of the meaning of another's artistic or creative work; an elucidation: an interpretation of a poem.*

• Speaker:

The person or thing that is narrating the poem, short story, or movie.

• Audience:

The group or groups of people a poem, short story, or movie is originally intended for.

• Situation:

The event that is taking place in the poem, short story, or movie.

• Cultural References:

References to any subject that would be commonly recognized by people living within a certain place and time.*

• Imagery:

Generally, descriptions that are desighned to make you SEE, FEEL, or THINK something.*

• Metaphor:

A figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”*

• Simile:

A figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose.”*

• Symbol:

Something used for or regarded as representing something else; a material object representing something, often something immaterial; emblem, token, or sign.*

• Point of View:

The position of the narrator in relation to the story, as indicated by the narrator's outlook from which the events are depicted and by the attitude toward the characters.*

• Plot:

The series of events that make up the story

• Exposition:

Background information that introduces the reader to important characters or events.

• Rising Action:

A series of increasingly more dramatic events.

• Climax:

The moment of highest drama in the story.

• Falling Action:

All action that occurs after the climax.

• Character:

An invididual within a story.

• Allegory:

A symbolical narrative.*

• Setting:

The specific place and time during which a story takes place.

• Motif:

A recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., esp. in a literary, artistic, or musical work.*

• Theme:

A unifying or dominant idea.*