GCSE English Language Terminology List
To pass your GCSE English Language exam you’ll need to be able to identify key language features. Here is a comprehensive list of all the linguistic techniques you should know:
Noun - A place or name or thing, e.g., ‘London’, ‘Tom’, ‘justice‘.
Adjective - A word that modifies (describes) a noun, e.g. ‘perfect’, ‘cold’, ‘sharp’.
Verb - A word that describes an action or state of being (a doing word), e.g., ‘jump’, ‘go’, ‘call’.
Evocative verb - A doing word that sounds particularly active, e.g., ‘the man raged’ or ‘stormed’ rather than ‘the man shouted’.
Adverb - A word that modifies (describes) an action, such as a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, e.g., ‘early’, ‘never’, ‘accidentally’.
Personification - Describing something non-human as if it were human, e.g., ‘I stared in the face of danger’.
Pathetic fallacy - Giving emotions to something non-human, often used to describe the environment or weather, e.g., ‘The rain wept tears around her’ (Note: personification is giving any human attribute to something non-human; pathetic fallacy is giving any emotion to something non-human).
Zoomorphism - Giving a human an animalistic trait, e.g., ‘He growled with wolfish hunger’.
Onomatopoeia - A word that sounds like its meaning, e.g., ‘snap’, ‘crackle’, and ‘pop’.
Alliteration - Words next to or near each other that start with the same letter, e.g., ‘she sells sea shells’ and ‘the barbarians broke through the barricade’.
Assonance - Words next to or near each other that have repeated vowel sounds, e.g., ‘the thunder rumbled, unsettling the murky dust’.
Sibilance - A repeated ‘s’ sound at the beginning of or in the middle of words, e.g., ‘She slipped past the sleeping sentry’.
Simile - Comparing two things, often using ‘as’ or ‘like’, e.g., ‘my heart beat like a drum’.
Metaphor - Comparing two things directly, as if something is something else, e.g., ‘his words cut deeper than a knife’.
Extended metaphor - The same as a metaphor but the idea will be repeated over multiple sentences or paragraphs, e.g., ‘His words cut deeper than a knife. They sliced straight through my heart.’
Rhetorical question - Often used in persuasive writing to lead the reader to the answer you want, since there is really only one way to answer this type of question, e.g., ‘Do we really want our planet to survive?’
Synonym - One or two words that have the same or similar meaning in some or all senses, e.g., ‘extensive’, ‘large’, ‘vast’, etc.
Hyperbole - Exaggerated statement that is not meant to be taken literally, e.g., ‘I’m drowning in homework’.
Oxymoron - A figure of speech in which contradictory terms are placed in conjunction, e.g., ‘I shall have share in this most happy wreck!’
Juxtaposition - When two (often contrasting) themes are presented near each other, e.g., love and loss or happy and sad emotions.
Repetition - The act of repeating something that has already been said or written, e.g., ‘time after time’ and ‘sorry, not sorry’.
Emotive language - Word choices that are used to evoke an emotional response from the reader, e.g., ‘An innocent bystander was murdered in cold blood in Downtown Chicago’.
Colloquial language - Informal or slang words and phrases, often used in everyday speech, e.g., ‘I’m gonna go to shop’ and ‘OMG, that’s sick’.
Figurative language - The creative use of words to create a meaning that isn’t literal, but implies something, e.g., ‘I could eat a horse’ to mean you’re very hungry.
Pun - A joke, or a play on words, e.g., ‘you can tune a guitar but you can’t tuna fish’.
Pathos - A quality that evokes pity or sadness in the reader, e.g., a charity advert that shows a malnourished child struggling to survive in a hostile environment.’
Anecdote - A short story from personal experience, often used to support a point, e.g., ‘Like that time your dog ate your homework and Mrs Wilson gave you detention anyway. Remember?’
Idiom - A commonly used phrase or metaphor, e.g., ‘back to the drawing board’ or ‘once in a blue moon’.
Semantic field - A group of words or phrases that link to a particular theme with an underlying emotion or expression, e.g., ‘melancholy', ‘sombre’, ‘unhappy’, and ‘grey’ are examples of a semantic field of sad emotions.
Lexical field - A group of words or phrases that link to the same meaning, e.g., ‘walking’, ‘running’, ‘jogging’, and ‘hiking’.
Double entendre - A word or phrase that has a double meaning, one of which is often rude, e.g., ‘You look really hot’ said to someone who is sweating, but also meaning attractive.
Sensory detail - Alluding to the senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, e.g., ‘She looked out at the snow draped over cottages and fields like an icy blanket.’
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GCSE English Structure Terminology List (coming soon)
What next?
Create flashcards of key terminology
Practise identifying language features within a text
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