Vocabulary
Teacher resource: textual features
Textual features relevant to the third objective of Dimension 2 are described below. These are
features that teachers may like to draw on to further build students’ word use, knowledge and
selection.
The table does not include any terms already listed in the glossary or Appendix 1: Aesthetic
features of the syllabus.
Textual feature
Explanation
Allegory
Figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another;
presentation of an abstract or spiritual meaning under concrete or
material forms.
Example: Aesop’s Fables, John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Allusion
An indirect reference to someone or something to enhance
meaning, usually stemming from literary, religious or cultural
works.
Example:
The scoundrel grinned devilishly when the wrong lad was
arrested.
The girl’s love of chocolate was her Achilles heel.
Anachronism
A reference that is “out of time” or not suitable to an era of history.
Example: Writing with pen and paper can seem anachronistic with
the ready availability of laptops and iPads now.
The movie was set far in the future, but the old-fashioned style of
clothing for the costumes was a distracting anachronism.
Aphorism
A terse saying embodying a general truth.
Example: Life wasn’t meant to be easy.
Cliché
Overused, hackneyed, trite and unoriginal phrase or statement.
Example: As good as gold, faster than a speeding bullet.
Epigram
Brief and pointed saying that says more than it seems to.
Example: Each picture is worth a thousand words.
Epithet
There are two kinds of epithets:
 a characterising word or phrase accompanying or occurring in
place of the name of the person or thing
 a disparaging or abusive word or phrase.
Example: His skilful footwork earned him the name “Mr Footy”.
Many were offended by her use of racial epithets.
Eponym
A name, especially a place or thing, taken from a person’s name,
real or mythical.
Example: Elizabethan, Myer store, Lamington cake, Caesar salad,
McCarthyism.
Hyperbole
Obvious exaggeration for effect or an extravagant statement not
intended to be taken literally.
Example: The package took forever to arrive in the mail.
I don’t have two cents to rub together.
A literary example is the poem, Kubla Khan, by Samuel Coleridge.
Jargon
The language peculiar to a trade, profession or other group.
Malapropism
The usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a
word or phrase, especially the use of a word sounding somewhat
like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context.
Example: He told wonderful antidotes instead of the correct He
told wonderful anecdotes.
Metonymy
This is substitution or use of the name of an attribute or adjunct for
that of the thing meant.
Example: Crown for government, turf for horse-racing.
Motif
A recurrent thematic element in a literary work.
It denotes the presence of certain character types, objects,
settings and situations in diverse genres and periods of folklore
and literature.
Example: swords, money, jewels, food, forests, oceans, castles,
dungeons, tests of skill or wisdom, journeys, separations and
reunions, chaos brought to order.
Nuance
A shade of meaning, feeling, colour, expression that cannot quite
be identified (in social and cultural contexts usually).
Example:
In Mexico the gods ruled, the priests interpreted and interposed;
the people obeyed. In Spain the priests ruled, the king interpreted
and interposed; the gods obeyed. A nuance in an ideological
difference is a wide chasm (Richard Condon, A Talent for Loving,
1964, Random House, New York).
Nuance can also be shown through body language, such as the
difference between one sort of smile and another, one type of
stance and another.
Oxymoron
A figure of speech in which an effect is produced by a seeming
self-contradiction, e.g. Make haste slowly.
The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective-noun
combination of two words, e.g. Cruel kindness, dark light.
A literary example is a line from Idylls of the King by Tennyson:
“And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”
Paradox
Statement or proposition seemingly self-contradictory, or absurd,
and yet explicable as expressing a truth.
Example:
“I must be cruel to be kind.” (from Shakespeare’s Hamlet)
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
(from Animal Farm by George Orwell).
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Polysemy
The multiple meanings of a word that have a central origin; the
origin gives the sense to the expanded meanings of the word over
time.
Example: mole — small burrowing animal, largely unseen; person
who burrows for information hoping to go undetected.
Regularisation
The process whereby new dialect variants have become accepted
or regularised into the dialect or language.
Expressions from subcultures have become part of mainstream
| Vocabulary Teacher resource: textual features
English, giving established words new meanings or flavour.
Example: cool, bread, dough.
Slang
Language differing from standard or written speech in vocabulary
and construction, involving extensive metaphor, ellipsis or
humorous usage; less conservative and more informal than
standard speech, and sometimes regarded as being in some way
inferior.
Spoonerism
A transposition of usually initial sounds of two or more words,
sometimes with a ludicrous effect.
Example: Tons of soil for sons of toil; Runny babbit: A billy sook
for Bunny rabbit: A silly book.
Synecdoche
A figure of speech where part of an expression is used for the
whole expression.
Example: Australia for the Australian Olympic team; bread for food
in general.
Toponym
The name of an object is based upon the area from which it
comes.
Example: Champagne (after the region in France); denim (cloth
from Nimes — de Nîmes); bunkum (after the region of Buncombe
County in North Carolina, when one of the region’s elected
politicians made a foolish speech in Congress).
Queensland Studies Authority July 2011
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