Do they still teach "desc.language" in school?

[kavaris]

For any of yous that either know of others in school, or themselves have kids, or that are familiar w/ writing (English) class in our current school systems, 2025/2026... Q: Do they still teach kids about like Descriptive Language ?

In other words, do yous even know what that term is, as far as like, where you then get all these other things stemming from...? I ask because theyve never made a wiki page that explicitly refers to it as descriptive language, thus it feels like it isnt even a term thats used or acknowledged, unless i just havent found it yet. Anyway, when i show you how many things fall under "descriptive language", you will understand what im talking about here.

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1. Figurative Language: Simile, idiom (adage), metaphor, analogy (yous might say yous are using a *figure of speech* at this point), personification, archetypes, imagery/abstract language, allegory, motif/themes or refrain, allusion (i.e. alluding to), foreshadowing, stream of consciousness, apostrophe, aphorism, apophasis, hyperbole, downplay (sometimes just called an "understatement"), euphemism...

(cont.) Exaggeration and emphasis, compare and contrast, juxtaposition, litotes ~aka "double negatives", oxymoron (also called a contradiction), paradox, metonymy, synecdoche, flashback, recursion~aka "story within a story", allusion, alliteration, anthimeria, etc.

Which then gets us into phonetically/sound related things — Assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, euphony, cacophony, sibilance.

Word play/patterns would be more about playing w/ the visual/grammarian-related side or aspect of writing~And is technically what all of this would be considered, granted it encapsulates a many of things!

2. Rhetoric or rhetorical speech: Anaphora, epistrophe, a rhetorical question, chiasmus (reversal of grammatical structure—which is a good one!), antithesis, parallelism, polysyndeton, asyndeton, zeugma, syllepsis, et caetera.

3. Others i forgot: Irony, sarcasm, satire, comedy, synchronicity, coincidence, double entendre, ellipsis, proverb, epigram, transferred epithet (e.g. "sleepless night", the pers. is sleepless, not literally the night), cliff hanger, climax, Anti-climax, epiphany, ambiguousness or obfuscation.

In Medias Res ~ which is when you start in the middle of the action, e.g., the opening w/ a battle scene, cyclical structure~aka ending where the story, section or clause began.

Conclusion

Theres many more than that, as i just wanted to find a way to break em down, such that you could start to see the immense group of literary devices that "descriptive language" encapsulates—Some, which of course start to blend into each other, especially when we are trying to express the diff between "analogy" v. metaphor, or things like this.

When you have the right term, that is a way to encapsulate or group all other terms; You have a way to find things in the enormity of your mind, since they arent entirely abstracted and incomprehensible, but they have some basis or place to live in your mind, which you can make more memorable later on. Anyway i hope that gives yous some food for thought to play w/

Also, if yous happen to know whether they still speak of things in terms of "descriptive language" n scool, feel free to correct me and let me know. Also also, if theres anything that i missed, didnt do, or fk'd up on this list, please feel free to correct it.

Edited February 13 by kavaris

[kavaris]

That would ve sick if there was a class in school called *Divine language* or *Angelic language* class; Like how to write in *stream of consciousness. Like that would ignite creativity for sure.

[kavaris]

Literary Filters & Rephrasers~Preface

Euphemism - a mild / indirect word or way to substitute or replace an idea thats considered too harsh when referring to something unpleasant, embarrassing, etc.

This almost gets into like, strategies of writing or how to change something, like almost like "grammatical filters"~Which i thought was an interesting sentiment, like ways of writing that dont fit as either a genre of writing, nor a device in the moment, but rather a spectrum of filters or ways of rethinking or rephrasing what you are saying.

In English theres so many ways to phrase things, and much like programming on the computer, you can get stuck if you dont understand how to rephrase / restructure something, like for instance, i want to say —

"The mongoose had a cat riding around on its back, however it was upset by the experience"

Maybe you could change the last part to say, "... however it wasnt thrilled by the exp", or "... however it wasnt enjoying itself"

Or, if/when you feel its sounding a bit odd, we could just start from the beginning like,

"The cat jumped on the mongoose, although the mongoose didnt enjoy that the cat was riding around on its back"

Or we could say,

"The mongoose wasnt enjoying itself, as it had a cat riding around on its back"

or changing it up entirely, "An event happened between a cat and a mongoose...", then explain the event.

Like its probably a bad example, but there are definitely instances where you are stumped, cause you have a thought in your head, but the way its phrased doesnt translate to writing in a fluent and natural sounding way, or it doesnt sound right.

Sometimes ya have to run it through a grammatical filter~or its a matter of changing it around — as if you put it through a machine in your head, and rephrased it to see which one sounds better -typeve thing. Yous can think of a better name for the latter method.

Edited 18 hours ago by kavaris