Figurative Language and Imagery

Figurative Language and Imagery

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

A figure of speech is a way of expressing an idea, thought, or image with words which carry meanings beyond their literal ones. Figurative language gives extra dimension to the language by stimulating the imagination and evoking visual and sensual imagery, while painting a mental picture in words. The following are examples of figurative language:

•  Simile is a comparison of two different things or ideas through the use of the words like or as. It is definitely a stated comparison, where the poet says one thing is like another, e.g., The warrior fought like a lion.

•  Metaphor is a comparison without the use of like or as. The poet states that one thing is another. It is usually a comparison between something that is real or concrete and something that is abstract, e.g., Life is but a dream.

•  Personification is a kind of metaphor which gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics, e.g., The wind cried in the dark.

•  Hyperbole is a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. It may be used either for serious or comic effect, e.g., The shot that was heard ‘round the world.

•  Understatement (Meiosis) is the opposite of hyperbole. It is a kind of irony which deliberately represents something as much less than it really is, e.g., I could probably manage to survive on a salary of two million dollars per year.

•  Paradox is a statement which contradicts itself. It may seem almost absurd. Although it may seem to be at odds with ordinary experience, it usually turns out to have a coherent meaning and reveals a truth which is normally hidden, e.g., The more you know the more you know you don’t know. (Socrates)

•  Oxymoron is a form of paradox which combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression. This combination usually serves the purpose of shocking the reader into awareness, e.g., sweet sorrow, wooden nickel.

•  Pun is a play on words which are identical or similar in sound but which have sharply diverse meanings. Puns may have serious as well as humorous uses, e.g., When Mercutio is bleeding to death in Romeo and Juliet, he says to his friends, “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”

•  Irony is the result of a statement saying one thing while meaning the opposite. Its purpose is usually to criticize, e.g., It is simple to stop smoking. I’ve done it many times.

•  Sarcasm is a type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something while he is actually insulting the thing. Its purpose is to injure or hurt, e.g., As I fell down the stairs head-first, I heard her say, “look at that coordination.”

•  Antithesis involves a direct contrast of structurally parallel word groupings generally for the purpose of contrast, e.g., sink or swim.

•  Apostrophe is a form of personification in which the absent or dead are spoken to as if present, and the inanimate as if animate. Those are all addressed directly, e.g., The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

•  Allusion is a reference to a mythological, literary, historical, or Biblical person, place or thing, e.g., He met his Waterloo.

IMAGERY

The representation through language of sense experience is known as imagery. Imagery can appeal to any combination of the senses.

•  Auditory imagery. The representation through language of an experience pertaining to sound.

"Br-r-r-am-m-m, rackety-am-am, OM, Am: / All-r-r-room, r-r-ram, ala-bas-ter- / Am, the world's my oyster." --Mona Van Duyn, "What the Motorcycle Said"

"Sssh the sea says / Sssh the small waves at the shore say, sssh / Not so violent, not / So haughty, not / So remarkable. / Sssh / Says the tips of the waves / Crowding the headland's / surf." --Rolf Jacobsen, "Sssh"

Gustatory imagery. The representation through language of an experience pertaining to taste.

"Taut skin / pierced, bitten, provoked into / juice, and tart flesh" --Helen Chasin, "The Word Plum"

"The excrement of the dugong is precious ambergris / because it eats such beauty. Anyone who feeds on Majesty / becomes eloquent. The bee, from mystic inspiration, / fills its rooms with honey." --Rumi, "The Force of Friendship"

•  Kinesthetic imagery. The representation through language of an experience pertaining to the movement of the body's muscles, tendons, and joints.

"They are like great runners: they know they are alone / with the road surface, the cold, the wind, / the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- / vascular health" --Sharon Old, "Sex Without Love"

"Teeth tear through the walls of the apple / like a plane crashing in the suburbs." --Ricardo Pau- Llosa, "Foreign Language"

•  Olfactory imagery. The representation through language of an experience pertaining to smell.
"To sniff the heavy honeysuckled-smell / Twined with another odor heavier still / and hear the

flies' intolerable buzz." --Richard Wilbur, "The Pardon”

•  Tactile imagery. The representation through language of an experience pertaining to touch.
"Touching you I catch midnight / As moon fires set in my throat / I love you flesh into blossom."

--Audre Lorde, "Recreation"

•  Visual imagery. The representation through language of an experience pertaining to sight.

"Like them in shapes of fleeting fire / She mingles with the light / Till whoso saw her sees her not / And doubts his former sight." --Hugh MacDiarmid, "A Herd of Does"