1

Complete the sentences and identify how figurative language is used.

I came, I saw, ... Life is like … (was a large display ad at BCIT near the end of

May) Miata... (radio ad, with music) Sleep Country

Canada… as Canadian as…. (Peter Gzowski CBC

radio contest radio contest)

2

Style, Tone, Diction, Figurative Language

(SSW, Ch. 1 ,6; W. Horner,Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition, 299-318)

identify, analyse, practice, and evaluate: style & tone: point of view, jargon, genre diction: concrete and abstract meanings figurative language: pun, metaphor,

simile, personification, exaggeration, understatement onomatopoeia, repetition, parallelism, alliteration, assonance.

3

Rhetorical Effect

Rhetorical effect: the response that the manner of writing - not the message - generates in the reader.

Create a desired effect though style and tone (related to discourse ctty) level of diction (word choice & placement) stylistic techniques (e.g., figurative

language).

4

Style, Jargon, & Genre

jargon: related to OF : chattering / warbling “technical or secret vocabulary of a science, art,

trade, sect, profession”; (M. Cowley’s neologism)

language that helps define and is understood by members of a discourse community

often associated with specific genres (detective novels, sermons, hip-hop, text messaging) or contexts / discourse communities (academic, professional, blogs, friends & family)

5

Diction, or Word Choice

words as part of sentences, paragraph, and essays

Choose words with correct meanings based on subject, audience, genre,

intent, using appropriatelyabstract and concrete words level of formality (formal, informal,

technical, colloquial)

6

Meanings: Concrete & Abstract be clear about word meanings: make sure

words you use mean what you think they do. If you’re not sure, use a dictionary

in general, choose concrete, specific words over abstract words: concrete: can be perceived with our senses; evoke

precise, vivid imagery; help specify what we mean and enhance communication

abstract: not sense-perceivable; images created by abstract terms differ from person to person

7

Tropes and Schemes

Tropes: altered meaning Pun Metaphor Simile Personification Exaggeration Understatement Onomatopoeia Neologism - new word

Schemes: altered Schemes: altered word orderword order Balance - parallelismBalance - parallelism RepetitionRepetition Sound - alliterationSound - alliteration Sound - assonanceSound - assonance

8

Pun the most familiar form of figurative language a play on the meaning of words:

1 word, 2 different senses (hang, creep) words that sound similar or alike but have different

meanings (bearing / Bering; grader / grater) single word with two different meanings in one

sentence - a.k.a. “equivocation:” (running out of the pen -- ink and pig)

can be serious, profound, or humorous, as in these* student exam answers *Harper’s, Dec. 05: Proteins are composed of a mean old acid. The equator is an imaginary lion that runs around the

world forever

9

Metaphor the most important and widely used form of

figurative language an implied comparison between two unlike

things Often, metaphors lose their comparative sense

and become part of everyday language can be simple, or extended or dead

“we must stay the course” in Afghanistan the heart of the matter

10

Simile / Onomatopoeia

Simile: an explicit comparison between two unlike things, signaled by use of “like” or “as” as with metaphor, enriches meaning by

bringing in connotations of a word or phrase:

as crazy as a loon Life is like …

Onomatopoeia: using words whose sound reinforces their meaning:

clatter, rush, crackle, bang, snarl, slapped

11

Personification

writer or speaker attributes human or animate qualities to an inanimate object; very common! The wind roared -- wind doesn’t have an actual voice The leg of the table -- does a table have a head?

arms? eyes? * examples from student exams suggest the need

humans have to project themselves & life on the world around us, in order to understand: The cause of dew is the earth revolving on its own axis

and perspiring freely. A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind

which way it wants to go.

12

Exaggeration / Understatement

Hy-PER-bo-le: deliberate exaggeration for emphasis:

died laughing “Ultimately there could be a Uranium card…” (TYS)

LIT-o-tes: intensifies an idea by understating it: He’s not the best student in the world.

can add metaphor: “elevator doesn’t go to the top floor”

“This label contains five more words than the one on a nuclear bomb.” (Told You So)

Hyperbole & understatement call attention to what you’re saying, & can be combined with irony.

13

Repetition and Parallelism crucial to effective spoken discourse Repeating word or patterns of words can

reinforce meaning and provide emphasis Ecclesiastes: “a time to...” choruses in popular songs

Parallelism expresses similar or related ideas in similar grammatical construction; very effective; jarring when it’s missing Told You So, p.18: “…agitated about mechanisms of

injury that are relatively minor or unlikely…while shrugging off those that are serious and prevalent …”

14

Alliteration and Assonance

Alliteration: commonly used; repetition of the same sound at the beginning of successive words; can edge towards being a rhyme in summer season, when the sun was soft... …little old lady got mutilated last last night /

Werewolves of London again (Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London”)

Assonance: repetition of sounds within words “..extinguished now, and gone from us forever” (Ossie

Davis, “Eulogie for Malcom X”) Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness / Thou foster

child of silence and slow time (John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”)

15

Figurative language & parallelism (mis)used -- at times creatively-- by students in assignments

When a planet first forms, it is like a big ball of mucus.

Water is composed of two gins, oxygin and hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.

The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is something to hitch meat to.

submitted by elementary, secondary, and post-secondary teachers to Richard

Lederer; excerpted in Harper’s Magazine, Dec. 2005, 19-20

16

Men are mammals and women are femammals.

Clouds are high-flying fogs. I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing. Clouds just keep circling the earth around and around. And around. There is not much else to do.

Algebra was the wife of Euclid. Many dead animals of the past changed to

fossils while others preferred to be oil.

student answers - from Harper’s Magazine, cont.

17

Figurative Language: sentences completed

“I came, I saw, I conquered” (parallelism)- J. Caesar “Veni, Vidi, Vici” in Latin also = alliteration and assonance

“Miata here” (pun) - pitched to graduating students in a BCIT poster ad; “pronounced ‘me outta here’”

“Life is like a box of chocolates” (simile) - Forest Gump: “you never know what you’re going to get” - others answers are possible!

“Sleep Country Canada: why buy a mattress anywhere else?” (alliteration of s,c,l; assonance of “e”; rhyme - “why buy”)

“as Canadian as possible, given the circumstances” (P. Gzowski CBC radio contest; subverted simile)