GCSE AQA English Language - Figurative Language Techniques

Metaphors

Metaphor - A figure of speech where you say something is another thing. You create an analogy to compare or liken two things.

Examples

“The moon’s a balloon”

• In this phrase you are comparing the motion of the moon rising in the sky to the motion of a balloon as it rises.

• When balloons rise into the sky, they usually move quite gently and steadily

• In this metaphor, it is the motion of both objects that we are looking at. Both objects move gently and smoothly upwards.

“Anger flooded into her brain”

• In this this phrase, you are comparing the feeling of her sudden feeling of immense anger and the motion of water quickly flooding into an area and covering everything.

• In this metaphor, we visualize anger cov“Anger flooded into her brain”ering up all the good feelings and good sense in the brain. The anger takes over, possibly cause damage to the girl’s life.

“Sea of Nameless faces”

• In this phrase, you are comparing the image of the sea(which is full of water molecules) to a huge crowd(Which is full of people he doesn’t recognise)

• When we look at the sea and only sea water, in this metaphor we can only see faces in the crowd.

“ Curtain of fog”

• In this metaphor, you create the image of fog falling down on the area as if it is a curtain being dropped over the place.

• This could also suggest that the fog is thick and difficult to see through.

Tips for using Metaphors

• Focus on the qualities of things

• Focus on the comparisons

• Extend to make your ideas clearer

  • Metaphors leave a bit of room for interpretation

  • If you want to make your ideas clearer, simple extend your metaphor

• Make clear comparisons