Figurative Language

1. Figurative Language Analyzing Style

2. Figurative Language Simply put, figurative language is a way of expressing an idea, thought, or image with words which carry meanings beyond their literal ones. Figurative language gives extra dimension to the language by stimulating the imagination and evoking visual and sensual imagery, while painting a mental picture in words.

3. Figurative Language There are a myriad of figurative language techniques that writers use to enhance their writing, but they can very loosely be categorized into two groups, those of thought and sound.

4. Thought Techniques The following are just a few of the most common techniques: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole and understatement, analogy, symbolism, allusion, oxymoron and paradox, metonymy, irony, synecdoche, apostrophe, and imagery.

5. Thought Techniques Simile - a� comparison between two different things that resemble each other in at least one way. In formal prose the simile is a device both of art and explanation, comparing an unfamiliar thing to some familiar thing (an object, event, process, etc.) known to the reader. Most often the simile uses the words like or as, but sometimes the comparison is implied. The soul in the body is like a bird in a cage. Metaphor - compares two different things by speaking of one in terms of the other. Unlike a simile or analogy, metaphor asserts that one thing is another thing, not just that one is like another. Affliction then is ours; / We are the trees whom shaking fastens more. --George Herbert

6. Thought Techniques Personification - metaphorically represents an animal or inanimate object as having human attributes--attributes of form, character, feelings, behavior, and so on. Ideas and abstractions can also be personified. The ship began to creak and protest as it struggled against the rising sea.

7. Thought Techniques Analogy - compares two things, which are alike in several respects, for the purpose of explaining or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea or object by showing how the idea or object is similar to some familiar one. Simile and analogy often overlap, but simile is generally done briefly for effect and emphasis, while analogy serves the more practical end of explaining a thought process or a line of reasoning or the abstract in terms of the concrete, and may therefore be more extended. You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables. --Samuel Johnson

8. Thought Techniques Hyperbole - deliberately exaggerates conditions for emphasis or effect. In formal writing the hyperbole must be clearly intended as an exaggeration. There are a thousand reasons why more research is needed on solar energy. Understatement - deliberately expresses an idea as less important than it actually is, either for ironic emphasis or for politeness and tact. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake interrupted business somewhat in the downtown area.

9. Thought Techniques Irony - expression of something which is contrary to the intended meaning; the words say one thing but mean another. "Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man." Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Symbolism � the use of an image with an indefinite range of reference beyond itself. Some symbols are conventional ("the sun," "the eagle," "the Good Shepherd"), as they have a range of significance that is commonly understood in a particular culture. Other symbols are private or personal, having a special significance derived from their particular use by an author.

10. Thought Techniques Allusion - a short, informal reference to a famous person or event: Plan ahead: it wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. --Richard Cushing Apostrophe - interrupts the discussion or discourse and addresses directly a person or personified thing, either present or absent. Its most common purpose in prose is to give vent to or display intense emotion, which can no longer be held back: O books who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of you and enfranchise all who serve you faithfully! -- Richard de Bury

11. Thought Techniques Oxymoron - a paradox reduced to two words, usually in an adjective-noun ("eloquent silence") or adverb-adjective ("inertly strong") relationship, and is used for effect, complexity, emphasis, or wit: I do here make humbly bold to present them with a short account of themselves and their art.....--Jonathan Swift Paradox - an assertion seemingly opposed to common sense, but that may yet have some truth in it. "What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young." George Bernard Shaw

12. Thought Techniques Metonymy - another form of metaphor, very similar to synecdoche (and, in fact, some rhetoricians do not distinguish between the two), in which the thing chosen for the metaphorical image is closely associated with (but not an actual part of) the subject with which it is to be compared. The orders came directly from the White House. Synecdoche - a type of metaphor in which the part stands for the whole, the whole for a part, the genus for the species, the species for the genus, the material for the thing made, or in short, any portion, section, or main quality for the whole or the thing itself (or vice versa) Farmer Jones has two hundred head of cattle and three hired hands.

13. Thought Techniques Imagery - The term imagery has various applications. Generally, imagery includes all kinds of sense perception (not just visual pictures). In a more limited application, the term describes visible objects only (especially ones that are vivid). The term is perhaps most commonly used to describe figurative language as a collection of techniques, which is treated in modern criticism as a central indicator of meaning or theme in literature.

14. Sound Techniques The following are just a few of the most common techniques: rhyme, onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance and consonance, and rhythm.

15. Sound Techniques Rhyme - Words rhyme when their concluding syllables have a similar sound. Two words are said to rhyme if their last stressed vowel and the sounds that follow it match (as in "afar" and "bizarre," "biology" and "ideology," or "computer" and "commuter"). Rhythm - the organization of speech rhythms (verbal stresses) into regular patterns, in terms of both the arrangement of stresses and their frequency of repetition per line of verse. Iambic pentameter, for example, is an iamb, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (? `) that is repeated 5 (penta) times.

16. Sound Techniques Onomatopoeia - the use of words whose pronunciation imitates the sound the word describes. The flies buzzing and whizzing around their ears kept them from finishing the experiment at the swamp. Alliteration - the recurrence of initial consonant sounds. The repetition can be juxtaposed (and then it is usually limited to two words). Ah, what a delicious day!

17. Sound Techniques Assonance - similar vowel sounds repeated in successive or proximate words containing different consonants. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. --Matthew 5:14b Consonance - the repetition of a pattern of consonants within words in which the separating vowels differ, as in the pairs "leaf" and "loaf" or "room" and "roam."

18. Figurative Language Click HERE for a more complete list of terms

19. Your Assignment

20. Figurative Language in 1984