FIGURES OF SPEECH

Language can be used in two ways – literally and figuratively. Literal language is direct and
uses the real definition and meanings of words and phrases. But when we talk figuratively, the
meaning of any word/phrase will depend on the context in which they are used. A figure of
speech relies on such figurative language and rhetoric.

TYPES OF FIGURES OF SPEECH

1] SIMILE
A simile is a figure of speech that uses
comparison. In a simile, we use two specific words “like” and “as” to compare two unlikely
things, that actually have nothing in common. This is done to bring out the dramatic nature of
the prose and invoke vivid images and comparisons. It is one of the most common forms of a
figure of speech and is used in everything from day-to-day talk to poems.

EXAMPLES:
- quite like a mouse
- as tall as a mountain
- as strong as an ox
- precious like an angel

2] METAPHOR
A metaphor and a simile are quite similar actually. A metaphor also uses compares to things
that are in no way similar. It does so to bring out the symbolism. A metaphor is a word or phrase
used to show its similarity to another thing. It helps to explain an idea, but if you take a
metaphor at its literal meaning it will sound absurd.

EXAMPLES:
- "Success is a sense of achievement; it is not an illegitimate child."
This saying reinforces the belief that everyone wants to take credit for success, but no one
wants to take responsibility for their failings.
- "He broke my heart."
Your heart isn't literally broken; you're just feeling hurt and sad.
- "You light up my life."
Of course, no one can provide physical light. This expression is simply saying that someone
brings them joy.

3] PERSONIFICATION
Another very interesting figure of speech is personification. In this, we personify or represent a
non-human entity as human. We give an inanimate object or an intangible idea of some human
qualities such as emotions, or gestures or even speech. this is done to portray the object as
alive and help the listener or reader paint a vivid picture. Again, if we take the words at their
literal meaning they will sound absurd.
EXAMPLES:
- The tread of time is so ruthless that it tramples even the kings under its feet.
- It was early morning – I met a cat yawning and stretching in the street.
- The skyscraper was so tall that it seemed to kiss the sky.
- The tree was pulled down, and the birds lamented over its dead body.

4] HYPERBOLE
Hyperbole in the Greek language translates to ‘excess’. And that is what it does, it exaggerates.
We use hyperboles to emphasize the importance or the overstate something. This exaggerates
claims and statements are never meant to be taken at their literal meaning. They are used to
create a strong and lasting impression

EXAMPLES:
- Variety is the spice of life
- That man is as tall as a house.
- This is the worst day of my life.
- The shopping cost me a million dollars.
- My dad will kill me when he comes home.

5] ONOMATOPOEIA
This is a figure of speech where words or phrases indicate sounds. Often to bring about more
imagery and better describe a setting, authors use words to involve all five of our senses.
Onomatopeia refers to those words that imitate the sounds of an object or person.

EXAMPLES:
- Suddenly in the middle of the night, the dog started barking.
- The best part about music class is that you can bang on the drum.
- It is not unusual for a dog to bark when visitors arrive.
- Silence your cellphone so that it does not beep during the movie.

6] Alliteration
The repetition of an initial consonant sound.

EXAMPLES:
- She sells seashells by the seashore.
- He dunked the delicious donut in dairy creamer.
- The girl grabbed the golden goose and ran.

7] Anaphora
The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.

EXAMPLES:
- Unfortunately, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time on the wrong day.
 - I came, I saw, I conquered – Julius Caesar
- I am awake. I am strong. I am ready.
- Mom, we will not run. We will not scream. We will not be late.

8] Antithesis
The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.

EXAMPLES:
- As Abraham Lincoln said, "Folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
- Many are called, but few are chosen.
- "Man proposes, God disposes."
- "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing."

9] Apostrophe
Directly addressing a nonexistent person or an inanimate object as though it were a living being.

EXAMPLES:
- "Oh, you stupid car, you never work when I need you to," Bert sighed.
- Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
- “Ugh, cell phone, why won’t you load my messages?”

10] Assonance
Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.

EXAMPLES:
- How now, brown cow?
- "Hear the mellow wedding bells" by Edgar Allen Poe.
- "Try to light the fire"

11] Chiasmus
A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with
the parts reversed.

EXAMPLES:
- The famous chef said people should live to eat, not eat to live.
- He knowingly led and we followed blindly
- "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us."

12] Euphemism
The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.

EXAMPLES:
- "We're teaching our toddler how to go potty," Bob said.
- Going to the other side for death
 - Passed away for die

13] Irony
The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. Also, a statement or situation
where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.

EXAMPLES:
- "Oh, I love spending big bucks," said my dad, a notorious penny pincher.
- A fire station burns down.
- A marriage counselor files for divorce.
- The police station gets robbed.

14] Litotes:
A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by
negating its opposite.

Examples:
- A million dollars is no small chunk of change.
- They do not seem the happiest couple around.
- The ice cream was not too bad.
- New York is not an ordinary city.

15] Metonymy:
A figure of speech in a word or phrase is substituted for another with which it's closely
associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things
around it.

Examples:
- "That stuffed suit with the briefcase is a poor excuse for a salesman," the manager said
angrily.
- Crown. (For the power of a king.)
- The White House. (Referring to the American administration.)

16] Oxymoron:
A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side.

Examples:
- "He popped the jumbo shrimp in his mouth."
- This is another fine mess you have got us into.
- There is a real love hate relationship developing between the two of them.
- Suddenly the room filled with a deafening silence.
17] Paradox:
A statement that appears to contradict itself.
Examples:
- "This is the beginning of the end," said Eeyore, always the pessimist.
- Drowning in the fountain of eternal life
- Deep down, you're really shallow.

18] Pun:
A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the
similar sense or sound of different words.

Examples:
- Jessie looked up from her breakfast and said, "A boiled egg every morning is hard to
beat."
- Atheism is a non-prophet institution." (The word "prophet" is put in place of its
homophone "profit", altering the common phrase "non-profit institution")
- Santa Claus' helpers are known as subordinate Clauses.
- She had a photographic memory but never developed it.

19] Synecdoche:
A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole.

Examples:
- Tina is learning her ABC's in preschool.
- A hundred head of cattle (using the part head to refer to the whole animal)
- The word "head" can refer to counting cattle or people.
- The word "bread" can be used to represent food in general or money (e.g. he is the
breadwinner; music is my bread and butter).
-

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

Examples:
- "You could say Babe Ruth was a decent ballplayer," the reporter said with a wink.
- “It rained a bit more than usual.” – Describing an area being flooded by heavy rainfall.
- “It was O.K.” – Said by the student who got the highest score on the test.
- “It is a bit nippy today.” – Describing the temperature, which is 5 degrees below freezing.

21] Consonance
Consonance is the repetition of a consonant sound and is typically used to refer to the repetition
of sounds at the end of the word, but also refers to repeated sounds in the middle of a word.

EXAMPLES:
 - Mike likes his new bike.
- I will crawl away the ball.
- He stood on the road and cried.
- Toss the glass, boss

22] Allusion

The act of alluding is to make indirect reference. It is a literary device, a figure of speech that
quickly stimulates different ideas and associations using only a couple of words.

Examples:
- David was being such a scrooge!. (Scrooge" is the allusion, and it refers to Charles
Dicken's novel, A Christmas Carol. Scrooge was very greedy and unkind, which David
was being compared to.)
- Your backyard is a Garden of Eden. (Biblical allusion)
- When you feel betrayed by a friend, you can say, "You too, Brutus?" (allusion to Julius
Caesar-Brutus betrayed Caesar)
- You're a regular Einstein. (allusion to a historical figure)

23] Antanaclasis
It is a rhetorical device in which a word is repeated and whose meaning changes in the second
instance. Antanaclasis is a common type of pun.

Examples:
- Your argument is sound, nothing but sound. – Benjamin Franklin.
(The word sound in the first instance means solid or reasonable. The second instance of sound
means empty.)
- Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
- In America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, Party always find you!
- "If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm."(Vince Lombardi)

Critical Approaches to Literature and Criticism

Reader-Response - Focuses on the reader (or "audience") and his or her experience of a
literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the
author or the content and form of the work.

Feminist Criticism - Focuses on female representation in literature, paying attention to female

points of view, concerns, and values. Three underlying assumptions in this approach are:
Western Society is pervasively patriarchal, male centered and controlled, and is organized in
such a way as to subordinate women; the concept of gender is socially constructed, not
biologically determined; and that patriarchal ideology pervades those writings which have been
considered great works of literature.
Queer Theory - Combined area of gay and lesbian studies and criticism, including studies of
variations in biological sex, gender identity, and sexual desires. Emphasis on dismantling the
key binary oppositions of Western culture: male/ female, heterosexual/ homosexual, etc. by
which the first category is assigned privilege, power, and centrality, while the second is
derogated, subordinated, and marginalized.

Marxist Criticism - Focuses on how literary works are products of the economic and ideological
determinants specific to that era. Critics examine the relationship of a literary product to the
actual economic and social reality of its time and place (Class stratification, class relations, and
dominant ideology).

Historical Criticism - Focuses on examining a text primarily in relation to the historical and
cultural conditions of its production, and also of its later critical interpretations. Cultural
materialism, a mode of NHC, argues that whatever the textuality of history, a culture and its
literary products are always conditioned by the real material forces and relations of production in
their historical era.

Psychological Criticism - Focuses on a work of literature primarily as an expression, in fictional

form, of the state of mind and the structure of personality of the individual author. In other
words, a literary text is related to its authors mental and emotional traits. Furthest extension is
Psychoanalytic Criticism, emphasis on phallic symbols, wombs, breasts, etc. Theorists include
Lacan and Klein.

New Criticism - The proper concern of literary criticism is not with the external circumstances or
effects or historical position of a work, but with a detailed consideration of the work itself as an
independent entity. Emphasis on the words on the page. Study of poetry focuses on the
autonomy of the work as existing for its own sake, analysis of words, figures of speech, and
symbols. Distinctive procedure is close reading and attention to recurrent images; these critics
delight in tension, irony, and paradox. (Similar to Formalism or Neo-Aristotelian)

Deconstruction - Focuses on the practice of reading a text in order to subvert or undermine the
assumption that the text can be interpreted coherently to have a universal determinate meaning.
Typically, deconstructive readings closely examine the conflicting forces/meanings within the
text in order to show that the text has an indefinite array of possible readings/significations.

Archetypal/Mythic Criticism - Focuses on recurrent narrative designs, patterns of action,

character types, or images which are said to be identifiable in a wide variety of literary works,
myths, dreams, and even ritualized modes of behavior. Critics tend to emphasize the mythical
patterns in literature, such as the death-rebirth theme and journey of the hero.

Cultural Criticism - This lens examines the text from the perspective of cultural attitudes and
often focuses on individuals within society who are marginalized or face discrimination in some
way. Cultural criticism may consider race, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexuality or other
characteristics that separate individuals in society and potentially lead to one feeling or being
treated as less than another. It suggests that being included or excluded from the dominant
culture changes the way one may view the text.

Modernism/Post-Modernism - Modernism is a rejection of traditional forms of literature

(chronological plots, continuous narratives, closed endings etc.) in favor of experimental forms.
They have nostalgia for the past that they feel is lost so Modernist texts often include multiple
allusions. Post-Modernists follow the same principles but celebrate the new forms of
fragmentation rather than lamenting them.
Look for ironies within a text
Analyze fragmentation and a mixing of genres and forms
Blurs the line between high literature (classics) and popular literature (NY Times Bestsellers)

Mythological Criticism - This approach emphasizes the recurrent universal patterns underlying
most literary works. Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and
comparative religion, mythological criticism explores the artists common humanity by tracing
how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and
epochs. One key concept in mythological criticism is the archetype, a symbol, character,
situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response, which entered literary criticism from
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a collective unconscious,
a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each persons conscious
mindoften deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood,
archetypes according to Jung trigger the collective unconscious. Another critic, Northrop Frye,
defined archetypes in a more limited way as a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often
enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of ones literary experience as a whole.
Regardless of the definition of archetype they use, mythological critics tend to view literary
works in the broader context of works sharing a similar pattern.

Postcolonialism Criticism - Post-colonialism literature is most commonly written about countries

that have been previously colonized. A post-colonial lens would approach literature and look for
what effects colonization has left on a society or on individual characters. This criticism looks
through literature with the post-colonial theory. It shows history and the effects that colonization
can leave on a civilization even after they have gained independence. The post-colonialism
critical lens interprets the challenges and changes of a previously colonized nation as the
effects of colonization. The major important symbols are oppression and power. There is an
identity between the colonizer and the colonized. The goal of the critical lens is to seek to
understand the behavior of characters or the society. It can be analyzed by the setting and the
actions or behaviors depicted by characters in literature can be attributed to their country being
previously colonized. Characters or society can feel torn between the identities of their native
culture and the culture of the colonizing country. A reader needs to have a good grasp of
historical knowledge in order to fully apply the post colonialism lens to literature. A reader has to
be aware of the previous or current colonial status of any countries or societies that are
presented in a work of literature.
 Moral/Ethical Criticism - The moral/intellectual critical approach is concerned with content and
values. The approach is as old as literature itself, for literature is a traditional mode of imparting
morality, philosophy, and religion. The concern in moral/intellectual criticism is not only to
discover meaning but also to determine whether works of literature are both true and significant.
To study literature from the moral/intellectual perspective is therefore to determine whether a
work conveys a lesson or message and whether it can help readers lead better lives and
improve their understanding of the world: What ideas does the work contain? How strongly
does the work bring forth its ideas? What application do the ideas have to the works characters
and situations? How may the ideas be evaluated intellectually? Morally? Discussions based
on such questions do not imply that literature is primarily a medium of moral and intellectual
exhortation. Ideally, moral/intellectual criticism should differ from sermonizing to the degree that
readers should always be left with their own decisions about whether to assimilate the ideas of a
work and about whether the ideasand valuesare personally or morally acceptable. Sophisticated
critics have sometimes demeaned the moral/intellectual approach on the grounds that message
hunting reduces a works artistic value by treating it like a sermon or political speech; but the
approach will be valuable as long as readers expect literature to be applicable to their own
lives.