Figurative speech is language that contains images. The work horses of figurative speech are metaphor, simile and personification. Such language can be used to breathe life into otherwise lifeless prose. One of the chief values of figurative speech is that it helps create a clear and vivid image for the reader.
A metaphor is a direct comparison of two things. For example, if I want to say how fiercely John plays his position in the defensive backfield on the school football team, I may call him "tiger." In doing that, I am borrowing some of the qualities of a tiger and attributing them to John.
In his book The Complete Stylist Sheridan Baker looks at the roots of the word "metaphor," at the embedded image in the original Greek, to drive home its meaning. The word metaphor breaks down in two parts, Baker says:
meta = across
phor = ferry or carry
So, the word suggests a "carrying across" from one thing to the other. In the example above, we carried the characteristics of the tiger over to John. Interestingly, the Latin word 'transfer" works the same way:
trans = across
fer = ferry or carry
If I use "like" or "as" in the comparison, I am using a simile. I might say, for example, that "when John gets mad, he plays like a tiger."
If we "personify" something, we give it human characteristics. One of my favorite examples to use in class is the blackboard. i point at it and say, "Over the years, this blackboard has seen lots of students come and go." The truth is, of course, that blackboards see nothing. However, we can make our essays stand up and talk to people by using personification and other forms of figurative speech.
Indeed, some of our best writers are revered precisely because of their figurative speech, because they find new and fresh ways to say things, because they point out similarities we may not have noticed, because they use words to create vivid images and pictures for the mind's eye. Consider the way Cormac McCarthy describes the scene as a band of riders in his novel Blood Meridian set off in the dawn, heading west:
"The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts advanced elongate before them like the strands of the night from which they they'd ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come. They rode with their heads down, faceless under their hats, like an army asleep on the march" (45).
In this short passage, there are four similes, all of which contribute to a vivid picture -- all done in words.
It's a good idea to pay attention to how writers you like use figurative speech. And while you don't necessarily want to copy their similes and metaphors, you do want to imitate the fact that they liven up their writing with such figurative speech.
The Top 20 Figures
http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/a/20figures.htm
1. Alliteration
Repetition of an initial consonant sound.
2. Anaphora
Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.
3. Antithesis
The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
4. Apostrophe
Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character.
5. Assonance
Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.
6. Chiasmus
A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed.
7. Euphemism
The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.
8. Hyperbole
An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.
9. Irony
The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.
10. Litotes
A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.
11. Metaphor
An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common.
12. Metonymy
A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it.
13. Onomatopoeia
The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
14. Oxymoron
A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side.
15. Paradox
A statement that appears to contradict itself.
16. Personification
A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities.
17. Pun
A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.
18. Simile
A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.
19. Synechdoche
A figure of speech is which a part is used to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing made from it.
20. Understatement
A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.
A metaphor is a direct comparison of two things. For example, if I want to say how fiercely John plays his position in the defensive backfield on the school football team, I may call him "tiger." In doing that, I am borrowing some of the qualities of a tiger and attributing them to John.
In his book The Complete Stylist Sheridan Baker looks at the roots of the word "metaphor," at the embedded image in the original Greek, to drive home its meaning. The word metaphor breaks down in two parts, Baker says:
meta = across
phor = ferry or carry
So, the word suggests a "carrying across" from one thing to the other. In the example above, we carried the characteristics of the tiger over to John. Interestingly, the Latin word 'transfer" works the same way:
trans = across
fer = ferry or carry
If I use "like" or "as" in the comparison, I am using a simile. I might say, for example, that "when John gets mad, he plays like a tiger."
If we "personify" something, we give it human characteristics. One of my favorite examples to use in class is the blackboard. i point at it and say, "Over the years, this blackboard has seen lots of students come and go." The truth is, of course, that blackboards see nothing. However, we can make our essays stand up and talk to people by using personification and other forms of figurative speech.
Indeed, some of our best writers are revered precisely because of their figurative speech, because they find new and fresh ways to say things, because they point out similarities we may not have noticed, because they use words to create vivid images and pictures for the mind's eye. Consider the way Cormac McCarthy describes the scene as a band of riders in his novel Blood Meridian set off in the dawn, heading west:
"The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts advanced elongate before them like the strands of the night from which they they'd ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come. They rode with their heads down, faceless under their hats, like an army asleep on the march" (45).
In this short passage, there are four similes, all of which contribute to a vivid picture -- all done in words.
It's a good idea to pay attention to how writers you like use figurative speech. And while you don't necessarily want to copy their similes and metaphors, you do want to imitate the fact that they liven up their writing with such figurative speech.
The Top 20 Figures
http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/a/20figures.htm
1. Alliteration
Repetition of an initial consonant sound.
2. Anaphora
Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.
3. Antithesis
The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
4. Apostrophe
Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character.
5. Assonance
Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.
6. Chiasmus
A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed.
7. Euphemism
The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.
8. Hyperbole
An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.
9. Irony
The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.
10. Litotes
A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.
11. Metaphor
An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common.
12. Metonymy
A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it.
13. Onomatopoeia
The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
14. Oxymoron
A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side.
15. Paradox
A statement that appears to contradict itself.
16. Personification
A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities.
17. Pun
A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.
18. Simile
A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.
19. Synechdoche
A figure of speech is which a part is used to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing made from it.
20. Understatement
A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.
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