Figurative Language and Literary Devices
Idioms
Definition:
An expression whose overall meaning is different from the literal meaning of its individual words.
Purpose:
Idioms make language
Example:
You hit the nail on the head
is an idiom meaning
You are absolutely right.
Compare these sentences:
I was clumsy when I first learned how to knit.
or
At first I was all thumbs with my knitting needles.
Idioms Practice!
Hyperbole
Definition:
An exaggeration
Purpose:
Examples:
“He never speaks to her.”
Never? That is a very long time.
We have a ton of work.
A ton is a lot of work. A ton is also two thousand pounds.
I told you a million times.
I don’t mind repeating myself, but a million times? That’s a lot.
Hyperbole Practice!
A Narrative of the Life of Davy Crockett of the State of Tennessee
The next morning… we had just eat our breakfast, when a company of hunters came to our camp, who had fourteen dogs, but all so poor that when they would bark they would almost have to lean up against a tree and take a rest.
I took a notion to hunt a little more, and in about one month I killed forty-seven more, which made one hundred and five bears I had killed in less than one year.
We had laid down by our fire, and about ten o’clock there came a most terrible earthquake, which shook the earth so, that we were rocked about like we had been in a cradle… we thought it might take a notion and swallow us up, like the big fish did Jonah.
- Davy Crockett
Symbolism
Definition:
A person, place, thing or action that represents an abstract idea, belief, feeling, or attitude
Purpose:
To communicate multiple layers of meaning in a few words
Example:
There is a wall between us that I can not climb.
Springtime may represent youth, while winter may represent death and decay.
Symbolism Practice!
Mama had cut out a picture of a rose-covered cottage from a calendar and tacked it over the icebox. “Someday we’ll have a house like that,” she promised. That was back in 1933, the Great Depression, and we lived in a fourth-floor tenement walk-up on Broome Street, near Delancey. As the years passed, however, we had a hard time just paying the rent on our tenement apartment. More and more, I’d catch Mom staring at that faded, fly-specked picture, a faraway look in her eyes.
Imagery
Definition:
Descriptive words and phrases that appeal to the 5 senses
What are your five senses? Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, and Smell
An image conveys a sense perception , i.e., a visual picture, a sound, a feeling of touch, a taste, or an odor
Purpose:
Example:
Silence hung over the courtroom as the attorney stared unblinkingly at the witness until he began to fidget in his chair and glance nervously around the room.
Imagery Practice!
…It filled the can, it covered the floor
It cracked the window, it blocked the door
With bacon rinds, and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal.
Pizza crusts and withered greens
Soggy beans and tangerines,
Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
Gristly bits of beefy roasts….
Personification
Definition:
animals, objects, and abstract ideas are given human qualities
Example:
Personification Practice!
The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
The motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.
- Octavio Paz
Dialect
Definition:
A distinctive way of speaking, such as having an accent or using slang words, which reveals something about a character’s background or upbringing.
Example:
- from The Call of the Wild
Dialect Practice!
My name is Dovey Coe, and I reckon it don’t matter if you like me or not. I’m here to lay the record straight, to let you know them folks saying I done a terrible thing are liars. I aim to prove it, too. I hated Parnell Caraway as much as the next person, but I didn’t kill him.
- from Dovey Coe
Metaphor
Definition:
A comparison in which something is described as though it were something else.
A metaphor works by pointing out a similarity between two unlike things.
Example:
My brother is a whirlwind when he starts doing chores.
Meaning: he moves fast, seeming to do many things at once.
Metaphor Practice!
The night is a panther
blacker than black.
It prowls the Earth
as the sun goes down.
It quiets the world
with its pitch black dark
as everyone sleeps
and dreams good dreams.
The dark is silent
and swift and large
and up in space
it surrounds the stars.
- Andrew Stein
Simile
Definition:
A comparison of unlike things using like or as
Example:
Superman is as fast as a speeding bullet
My brother eats like a pig.
Simile Practice!
The willow is like an etching,
Fine-lined against the sky.
Then ginkgo is like a crude sketch,
Hardly worthy to be signed.
The willow’s music is like a soprano,
Delicate and thin.
The gingko’s tune is like a chorus
With everyone joining in….
- from Willow and Gingko, Eve Merriam
Irony
Definition:
Verbal: The use of a word or words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning.
Situational: An event or situation which represents the opposite of what is expected.
Dramatic: A situation in which the reader knows something that the characters in the story do not.
Example:
Irony Practice!
Written on a gravestone…..
He did not fear his enemies
Nor their despiteful ends
But not the seraphs* on their knees
Could save him from his friends.
- Phyllis McGinley
* angels
Onomatopoeia
Definition:
A word whose sound suggests its meaning.
Appears frequently in poetry and children’s tales.
Purpose:
Examples:
The murmuring of innumerable bees continued in a steady drone.
Onomatopoeia Practice!
From the jingling and the tingling of the bells
How they clang, and crash, and roar!
The Congo
Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,
Bing!
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom,
A roaring, epic, rag-time tune
From the mouth of the Congo
- Vachel Lindsay
Alliteration
Definition:
The repeating of the beginning consonant sounds in a group of words
Alliteration refers to the first sound rather than the first letter.
Purpose:
At the pond on a sun-dazzled day
of summer
Everyone is hit hard by the heat
Ducks dive, lowering their heads
into the cool water.
City slicker
From Harry Potter:
Luna Lovegood
Severus Snape
Minerva McGonegal
Godric Gryffindor, etc.
Alliteration Practice!
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
- Robert Frost
What idea is emphasized in line 1?
What is an example of alliteration in line 2?
How does the alliterative use of the d sound in line 7 emphasize meaning?
Repetition
Definition:
The use of the same word or phrase more than once
Purpose:
Example:
Song of Myself
I celebrate myself and sing myself
And what I assume you shall assume
For every atom belonging to me as
good belongs to you.
- Walt Whitman
Repetition emphasizes the individual and links the speaker (I) to the reader (you) reinforcing the theme
Repetition
It won’t work. Cutting taxes and increasing spending raises the deficit. It won’t work.
Parallelism
Definition:
The use of similar grammatical forms to express related ideas
Parallelism is a form of repetition. Instead of repeating an exact word, the writer repeats an exact phrasing of words.
Purpose:
Like repetition, parallelism is used for
Parallelism is often used in persuasive essays and political speeches to improve an argument
Example:
The risk is too great. The reward is too small. The rules are too rigid.
The three sentences have the same structure and pattern. (The ___ is too ___ ).