Blog 67: Figurative Language

Figurative language (or figures of speech) is an umbrella term that encapsulates a variety of literary and poetic techniques where the use of words or phrases differ from their literal definitions. The utilisation of figurative language creates context through asking the reader to understand the meaning of something in relation to other things, images, sounds, etc.

Figurative language is embedded into our everyday life and our communication with others is often riddled with sarcasm, hyperbole, metaphors, similes and idioms. I mean, how many times do you catch yourself or others around you using expressions like ‘you’re barking up the wrong tree’ or ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’? Sometimes literal language just isn’t enough to accurately express the tone, deeper meaning, or emotion you intend to convey. Figurative language isn’t only pervasive in our everyday speech, it’s also persuasive in the way it can expand the interpretations of what we want to come across to the reader.

Have a gander at these poetic devices that you can utilise to bring your poetry to life.

POETIC DEVICES	DEFINITION ACCORDING TO THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF LITERARY TERMS
Figure (figure of speech, figurative language)	An expression that departs from the accepted literal sense or from the normal order of words, or in which an emphasis is produced by patterns of sound. Such figurative language is an especially important resource of poetry, although not every poem will use it; it is constantly present in all other kinds of speech and writing, even though it usually passes unnoticed. The ancient theory of rhetoric named and categorized dozens of figures, drawing a rough and often disputed distinction between those (known as tropes or figures of thought) that extend the meaning of words, and those that merely affect their order or their impact upon an audience (known as figures of speech, schemes, or rhetorical figures). The most important tropes are metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, personification, and irony; others include hyperbole (overstatement), litotes (understatement), and periphrasis (circumlocution). The minor rhetorical figures can emphasize or enliven a point in several different ways by placing words in contrast with one another (antithesis), by repeating words in various patterns (anadiplosis, anaphora, antistrophe, chiasmus), by changing the order of words (hyperbaton), by missing out conjunctions (asyndeton), by changing course or breaking off in mid-sentence (anacoluthon, aposiopesis), or by assuming special modes of address (apostrophe) or enquiry (rhetorical question). A further category of figures, sometimes known as ‘figures of sound’, achieves emphasis by the repetition of sounds, as in alliteration, assonance, and consonance.
Trope	A figure of speech, especially one that uses words in senses beyond their literal meanings. The theory of rhetoric has involved several disputed attempts to clarify the distinction between tropes (or ‘figures of thought’ and schemes (or ‘figures of speech’). The most generally agreed distinction in modern theory is that tropes change the meanings of words, by a ‘turn’ of sense, whereas schemes merely rearrange their normal order. The major figures that are agreed upon as tropes are metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, personification, and hyperbole; litotes and periphrasis are also sometimes called tropes. The figurative sense of a word is sometimes called its tropological sense, tropology being the study of tropes – and especially of the spiritual meanings concealed behind the literal meanings of religious scriptures.
Scheme	A term once used for a rhetorical figure (or figure of speech), usually one that departs from the normal order or sound of words but does not extend their meanings as a trope does.
Metaphor	Figure of speech in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, to suggest some common quality shared between the two. In a metaphor, this resemblance is assumed as an imaginary identity rather than directly stated as a comparison: referring to a person as ‘that pig’, or ‘saying they are a pig’ is metaphorical, whereas ‘they are like a pig’ is a simile. Metaphors may also appear as verbs (a talent may blossom) or as adjectives (a novice may be green), or in longer idiomatic phrases, e.g. to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. A mixed metaphor is one which the combination of qualities suggested is illogical or ridiculous, usually as a result of trying to apply two metaphors to one thing: ‘those vipers stabbed us in the back’.
Simile	An explicit comparison between two different things, actions, or feelings, using the words ‘as’ or ‘like’, as in Wordsworth’s line: ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’. A very common figure of speech in both prose and verse, simile is more tentative and decorative than metaphor. A lengthy and more elaborate kind of simile, used as a digression in a narrative work, is the epic simile.
Epic Simile	An extended simile elaborated in such detail or at such length as to eclipse temporarily the main action of a narrative work, forming a decorative digression. Usually it compares one complex action (rather than a simple quality or thing) with another: for example, the approach of an army with the onset of storm-clouds.
Metonymy [met-on-imi]	A figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated with it, e.g. ‘the bottle’ for alcoholic drink, the ‘press’ for journalism, ‘skirt’ for a woman, ‘Mozart’ for Mozart’s music, ‘the oval office’ for the US presidency. A well-known metonymic saying is ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ (i.e. writing is more powerful than warfare). A word used in such metonymic expressions is sometimes called a metonym.
Synecdoche [si-nek-doki] Adjective: synecdochic	A common figure of speech (or trope) by which something is referred to indirectly, either by naming only some part or constituent of it (e.g. ‘hands’ for manual labourers) or – less often – by naming some more comprehensive entity of which it is a part (e.g. the ‘law’ for a police officer). Usually regarded as a special kind of metonymy, synecdoche occurs frequently in political journalism (e.g. ‘Moscow’ for the Russian government) and sports commentary (e.g. ‘Liverpool’ for one of that city’s football teams) but also has literary uses.
Personification Verb: personify	A figure of speech by which animals, abstract ideas, or inanimate things are referred to as if they were human, as in Sir Philip Sidney’s line: Invention, Nature’s child, fled stepdame Study’s blows. Personification has a special function as the basis of allegory. In drama, the term is sometimes applied to the impersonation of non-human things and ideas by human actors.
Irony	A subtle humorous perception of inconsistency, in which an apparently straightforward statement or event is undermined by its context to give it a very different significance. It is especially important in satire. Verbal irony involves a discrepancy between what is said and what is really meant, as in its crude form, sarcasm. Structural irony involves the use of a naïve or deluded hero or unreliable narrator, whose view of the world differs widely from the true circumstances recognized by the author and readers; literary irony thus flatters its readers’ intelligence at the expense of a character (or fictional narrator). A similar sense of detached superiority is achieved by dramatic irony, in which the audience knows more about a character’s situation than the character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character’s expectations, and thus ascribing a sharply different sense to some of the character’s own statements, in tragedies, this is called tragic irony. Cosmic irony is sometimes used to denote a view of people as the dupes of a cruelly mocking fate. A writer whose works are characterized by an ironic tone may be called an ironist.
Hyperbole [hy-per-boli]	Exaggeration for the sake of emphasis in a figure of speech not meant literally. An everyday example is the complaint ‘I’ve been waiting here for ages’.
Litotes [ly-toh-teez]	A figure of speech by which an affirmation is made indirectly by denying its opposite, usually with an effect of understatement: common examples ‘are no mean feat’ and ‘not averse to a drink’. This figure is not uncommon in all kinds of writing, for example, William Wordsworth in his autobiographical poem The Prelude frequently uses the phrase ‘not seldom’ to mean ‘fairly often’.
Periphrasis [pe-rif-ra-sis] (Plural – ases)	A roundabout way of referring to something by means of several words instead of naming it directly in a single word or phrase. Commonly known as circumlocution, periphrasis is often used in euphemisms like ‘passed away’ for ‘died’ but can have a more emphatic effect in poetry.
Antithesis [an-tith-e-sis] (Plural -theses) Adjective: antithetical	A contrast or opposition, either rhetorical or philosophical. In rhetoric, any disposition of words that serves to emphasize a contrast or opposition of ideas, usually by the balancing of connected clauses with parallel grammatical constructions. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, the characteristics of Adam and Eve are contrasted by antithesis: ‘for contemplation he and valour formed, for softness she and sweet attractive grace; he for God only, she for God in him’. In philosophy, an antithesis is a second argument or principle brought forward to oppose a first proposition or thesis.
Anadiplosis [an-a-di-ploh-sis] (Plural -oses)	A rhetorical figure of repetition in which a word or phrase appears both at the end of one clause, sentence, or stanza, and at the beginning of the next, thus linking the two units, as in the final line of Shakespeare’s 36th sonnet: As ‘though being mine, mine is thy good report’.
Anaphora [a-naf-o-ra] Adjective: anaphoral or anaphoric	A rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word or phrase is repeated in (and usually at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences. Found very often in both verse and prose.
Antistrophe [an-tis-tro-fi] Adjective: antistrophic	1. The accompanying verse lines recited by the chorus in a stanza matching exactly the metre of the preceding strophe. 2. In rhetoric, antistrophe is also the name given to two rhetorical figures of repetition: in the first, the order of terms in one clause is reversed in the next (‘all for one and one for all’), this effect being better known as chiasmus; in the second (also known as ‘epistrophe’), a word or phrase is repeated at the end of several successive clauses, lines, or sentences (‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’).
Chiasmus [ky-az-mus] (Plural -mi)	A figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. This may involve a repetition of the same words (‘pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure’ – Bryon), in which case the figure may be classified as antimetabole, or just a reversed parallel between two corresponding pairs of ideas, as in this line from Mary Leapor’s ‘Essay on Woman’: ‘Despised, if ugly; if she’s fair, betrayed’.
Hyperbaton	A figure of speech by which the normal order of words in a sentence is significantly altered. It is a very common form of poetic license.
Asyndeton [a-sin-det-on] (Plural -deta) Adjective: asyndetic	A form of verbal compression which consists of the omission of connecting words (usually conjunctions) between clauses. The most common form is the omission of ‘and’, leaving only a sequence of phrases linked by commas. Less common is the omission of pronouns.
Anacoluthon [an-a-ko-loo-thon] Adjective: anacoluthic	A grammatical term for a change of construction in a sentence that leaves the initial construction unfinished. For example, Mr Micawber in Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield: ‘accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances the – a – I would say, in short, by the influence of woman…’.
Aposiopesis [ap-o-syr-pee-sis] Adjective: aposiopetic	A rhetorical device in which the speaker suddenly breaks off in the middle of a sentence, leaving the sense unfinished. The device usually suggests strong emotion that makes the speaker unwilling or unable to continue.
Apostrophe [a-pos-tro-fi]	A rhetorical figure in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person, or an abstraction or inanimate object. In classical rhetoric, the term could also denote a speaker’s turning to address a particular member or section of the audience.
Rhetoric [ret-er-ik]	The deliberate exploitation of eloquence for the most persuasive effect in public speaking or in writing. Modern critics sometimes refer to the rhetorical dimension of a literary work, meaning those aspects of the work that persuade or otherwise guide the response of readers. A practitioner or theorist of rhetoric is called a rhetorician. A rhetorical question is a question asked for the sake of persuasive effect rather than as a genuine request for information.
Alliteration (head rhyme; initial rhyme)	The repetition of the same sounds- usually initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables – in any sequence of neighbouring words: ‘landscape-lover, lord of language’. Poetry in which alliteration rather than rhyme is the chief principle of repetition, is known as alliterative verse; its rules allow a vowel sound to alliterate with any other vowel.
Assonance	The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables (and sometimes in the following unstressed syllables) of neighbouring words; it is distinct from rhyme in that the consonants differ although the vowels match: ‘sweet dreams’, ‘hit or miss’. Assonance can be substituted for rhyme at the end of verse lines and is sometimes called vowel rhyme or vocalic rhyme. It is used within and between lines of verse for emphasis or musical effect.
Consonance	The repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighbouring words whose vowel sounds are different (e.g. ‘coming home’, ‘hot foot’). The term is most commonly used, though, for a special case of such repetition in which the words are identical except for the stressed vowel sound (‘group/grope’, ‘middle/muddle’, ‘wonder/wander’); this device, combining alliteration and terminal consonance, is sometimes known more precisely as ‘rich consonance’, and is frequently used at the end of verse lines as an alternative to full rhyme. Consonance may be regarded as the counterpart to the vowel-sound repetition known as assonance.

* All the information in this chart is directly from the fourth edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, written by Chris Baldick. (A book I highly recommend for all readers and writers).

Note from Angie

Hi there, creative writers. I may reduce my blogs to fortnightly or monthly due to ongoing health issues. However, what would you like to read about? Is there something that you are struggling with at the moment or a topic that you want to know more about when it comes to your writing? Hit me up and I will get cracking on it for my next blog.

Until then, keep being creative.