FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

TYPES OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Alliteration: Repetition of initial consonant sound.

• “Peck of pickled peppers” • Adjective: alliterative

Anaphora: repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.

• By building toward a climax, anaphora can create a strong emotional effect.

• A swelling, or raising up of emotion• MLK’s “I Have a Dream Speech”

CLAUSESA group of words with a subject and a predicate.

• Can be independent or dependent

• “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)

Phrases: any small group of words within a sentence or a clause. Includes a headword, which determines the type or nature of the phrase.

MORE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Antithesis: juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases or clauses.

• Plural: antitheses Adjective: Antithetical• “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”

• 'Cause you're hot then you're cold

You're yes then you're no

You're in then you're out

You're up then you're down You're wrong when it's right

It's black and it's white

We fight, we break up

We kiss, we make up You! You don't really want to stay, no

You! But you don't really want to go-o

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Apostrophe: Addressing some absent or nonexistent thing as if present and capable of understanding.

• “Twinkle, twinkle, little star”

Assonance: repetition of similar vowel sounds in neighboring words.

• Adjective: assonant• “I must confess that in my quest I felt depressed and restless” (Thin

Lizzy, “With Love”)

Chiasmus: verbal pattern (type of antithesis) in which the second half of the expression is balanced against the first with the parts reversed.

• Adjective: chiastic• “You forget what you want to remember, and you remember

what you want to forget.” (Cormac McCarthy, The Road)

EUPHEMISM/DYSPHEMISM

Euphemism: the substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit; “glossing over”.

• Adjective: euphemistic• “passed away” for “died”

Dysphemism: substitution of a more offensive term for one considered less so.

• Meant to shock and offend• Signals annoyance, anger, disapproval, or frustration of

the author/speaker• Used to shame, humiliate, degrade.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Hyperbole: (a type of irony) exaggeration used for effect, or emphasis; an extravagant phrase.

• Adjective: hyperbolic

Idiom: a set expression of 2 or more words that mean something other than the literal meaning of its individual words.

• Adjective: idiomatic• “If we play our cards right” “the graveyard shift” • Informal, makes text feel more relaxed

Imagery: vivid description that appeals to one or more of the senses.

• Illustrations of thoughts• Solidify image in the mind of the reader• Helps to communicate the writer’s world to the reader

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Irony: use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning; a statement of situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.

• Verbal Irony: a trope in which the intended meaning of a statement differs from the meaning that the words appear to express.

• Situational Irony: involves an incongruity between what is expected or intended and what actually occurs.

• Dramatic Irony: an effect produced by a narrative in which the audience knows more about the present or future circumstances than a character in the story.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Litotes: figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating (or denying) its opposite.

• “Not bad at all” • “Not unlike” • “No ordinary city” • “You are not wrong”

Litotes are a way to state an idea or agreement without coming right out and doing it directly.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Metaphor: an implied comparison that is made between 2 unlike things that actually have something in common.

• Expresses the unfamiliar (the tenor) in terms of the familiar (the vehicle).

• “The streets were a furnace, the sun an executioner.” (Cynthis Ozick, “Rosa”)

Metonymy: Substituting one word or phrase for another with which it is closely related (“crown” for “royalty”).

• “the suits on Wall Street” “Hollywood” • Also a rhetorical strategy of describing something

indirectly by referring to things around it, such as describing someone’s clothing to characterize the individual.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Onomatopoeia: use of words (such as “hiss” or “murmur”) that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or associations they refer to.

• Adjective: onomatopoeic or onomatopoetic

Oxymoron: when incongruous or contradicting terms appear side by side; a compressed paradox.

• Plural: oxymora or oxymorons • Adjective: oxymoronic or oxymoric• Alone together; old news; small crowd; clearly

misunderstood

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Paradox: a figure of speech in which a statement appears to contradict itself.

• Adjective: Paradoxical • “The swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.” (Henry David

Thoreau, Walden)

Personification: a trope or figure of speech (generally considered a type of metaphor) in which an inanimate object or abstraction is given human qualities or abilities.

• “Oreo: Milk’s favorite cookie”

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Pun: A play on words, either on different senses of the same word or on the similar sense or sound of different words. (Also known as paronomasia.)

• Kings worry about a receding heir line.

Simile: A figure of speech in which two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared, usually in a phrase introduced by like or as.

• "Good coffee is like friendship: rich and warm and strong.“ (slogan of Pan-American Coffee Bureau)

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Synecdoche: A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole (for example, ABCs for alphabet) or the whole for a part ("England won the World Cup in 1966").

• Synecdoche is often treated as a type of metonymy• Adjective: synecdochic or synecdochal.• “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Understatement: A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is. Contrast with hyperbole.

• "I have to have this operation. It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.“ (Holden Caulfield in The Catcher In The Rye, by J. D. Salinger)