Imagery & Figurative Language

An image is “a word or sequence of words

that refers to any sensory experience”

(Kennedy and Gioia 741).

ImageryWhat are your five senses? Sight, Hearing,

Touch, Taste, and Smell

An image conveys sensory perception-- a visual picture, a sound, a feeling of touch, a taste, or an odor

Figures of Speech

Figurative language uses figures of speech to convey unique images and create some sort

of special effect or impression.

A figure of speech is an intentional deviation from the ordinary usage of language.

Poetry and literature use comparison for effect

Writers often create images or enhance meaning by comparing one thing to another for special effect.

A most important figure of speech is the

Metaphor

Simile A simile is a figure of speech in which an explicit

comparison is made using the comparative words like, as, resembles, than. Similes are easy to spot.

(X is like Y: X is compared to Y in order to illustrate X more fancifully, poetically, or effectively. But Y is not a literal representation of X, not actual.)

The team’s center looked like a skyscraper. My love is like a red, red rose. We were as quiet as frightened mice.

More similes

Robertson and Hartley offer a good list of ways to make a simile:

My love is like a red, red rose.

My love resembles a rose.

My love is redder than a rose.

She came out smelling like a rose!

Metaphor A metaphor also compares, but a metaphor

is a bit more sophisticated than a simile. It compares two things by saying that one

IS the other In a metaphor, the words

like or as are missing. So readers have to recognize the comparison on their own without those easy words which help us to spot a simile so quickly.

Metaphor (continued)

In a metaphor, a poet writes that X is Y. Readers understand that we are not to take the comparison literally, but that the metaphor helps us to see X in a new way.

• My brother is a prince.

• Razorback Stadium was a slaughterhouse.

• Richard was a lion in the fight. • Her eyes are dark emeralds; her teeth are pearls.

Implied MetaphorKennedy and Gioia offer a kind of metaphor (767)

lacking the actual “to be” verb (is, am, are, was, were and other such forms of the verb “to be”) called

an Implied MetaphorWhat is implied here about the speaker’s love?

• Oh, my love has petals and sharp thorns.

And here, what is implied about the city and the subway?

• The subway coursed through the arteries of the city.

Extended Metaphor This kind of metaphor may run through an entire work. In

George Orwell’s Animal Farm, for example, the farm is compared to a nation, with different possible forms of goverance. This comparison extends throughout the novel.

Sometimes a poet will use an extended metaphor throughout

a poem rather than simply as one single figure of speech in a poem.

Personification Another kind of comparison is called

personification. Here, animals, elements of nature, and abstract ideas are given human qualities.

John Milton calls time “the subtle thief of youth”. Homer refers to “the rosy fingers of dawn”.

Other examples of personification

– The stars smiled down on us.

– An angry wind slashed its way across the island.

Uses

The three main uses of figurative language in literature and poetry are:– Simile

– Metaphor

– Personification

– But there are many others including:

Oxymoron Oxymoron - two contradictory terms are placed side by

side, usually for an effect of intensity:

• “And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”

(Tennyson)

• Living Dead

• Old News

• Open Secret

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is intentional exaggeration or overstating, often for dramatic or humorous effect:

Your predicament saddens me so much that I feel a veritable flood of tears coming on:

More… The effective practice of communication is

called rhetoric, and many, many rhetorical devices can be identified in language use.

Some rhetorical devices are anachronism, euphemism, pun, and onomatopoeia.

Anachronism

In the cartoon “The Flintstones,” Fred Flintstone owned a pet dinosaur named Dino. Why was this an anachronism?

Because dinosaurs and humans never existed at the same time. Dinosaurs were extinct for 60+ million years before humans appeared.

Anachronism– Something appearing out of its time period. (Root– chrono– time)

Euphemism “My son is big-boned,” the mother commented as her son

ate his fourth piece of cake. Why is that a euphemism?

Because big-boned is a less offensive way of saying “fat.”

Euphemism- is a substitution for an expression that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the receiver, using instead an agreeable or less offensive expression.

Root– euph meaning good omen or good.

You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish Why is this a pun? Because it use word play from similar sounding words?

Pun- is a form of word play which suggests two or more meaningsby exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding wordsfor an intended humorous or rhetorical effect.

Take note…

The term metaphor has two meanings, a broad, more general meaning and a concise, specific meaning.

All figures of speech which use association, comparison, or resemblance can generally be called types of metaphor, or metaphorical.

Birkerts, Sven. Literature: The Evolving Canon. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1993.

Ginsberg, Allen. “A Supermarket in California.” Literature:

The Evolving Canon. Sven P. Birkerts, ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1993. 599.

Kennedy, X.J. and Dana Gioia, eds. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999.

Works Cited