GR10 ENGLISH - Figurative Language

What are Figures of Speech?

What are Figures of Speech?

Figures of speech are expression using words in an unusual or non-literal sense. Figurative Language lends freshness and strength to ideas, creates a pictorial or sensory effect, and intensifies the emotional effect.

Image

An image is a word, phrase, etc. that evokes a sense of impression (touch, sight, taste, sound, smell) and gives the reader a more precise impression of the thing being described.

Simile

A simile is a comparison between two unlike things using ‘like’ or ‘as’ to make the comparison.

Metaphor

A metaphor is a comparison of two different things that does not use ‘like’ or ‘as’.

Personification

This comparative device gives human characteristics to an abstract idea, object, or animal.

Symbol

A symbol is an object that represents an abstract idea.

Apostrophe

This involves an address to the inanimate as if living or the absent as if present.

Metonomy

A substitution of a part for the whole.

Paradox

A statement that sounds contradictory or absurd, but in fact reveals a certain truth.

Oxymoron

This figure of speech in which two contradictory terms are combined.

Allusion

This is an undeveloped reference to a person, place, event, or thing. It may be historical, religious, mythological, or literary.

Diction

Diction refers to a writer’s vocabulary; his choice of certain words and phrases over others.

Effective Diction

Used to create mood, persuade, create a dramatic or humorous effect, evoke pathos etc.

Verbal Irony

The difference between what a person says and what is actually meant by what is said.

Situational Irony

The difference between what is supposed to happen and what actually ends up happening.

Dramatic Irony

When we (the reader) are aware of what’s happening that characters in the story are unaware of.

Hyperbole

Is the use of exaggeration used to create a humorous or dramatic effect, or to lend emphasis to an idea.

Understatement

Where a writer or speaker deliberately make a situation less important or serious than it is.

Pun

A pun creates humour or irony through the use of words which sound alike but have different meanings, or of a single word, with two or more meanings.

Sound Devices

Alliteration, Onomatopoeia, and Assonance help give emphasis to word, phrase, idea, etc.; or create a dramatic or sensory effect.

Alliteration

A series of words that begin with the same letter.

Onomatopoeia

Words that represent the sounds they make.

Assonance

Series of words that have the same vowel sound.