Section 3: Figurative Language

• Difference between literacy devices and figurative language:

  1. Literary devices - are literary tools an author uses to convey mood, tone, or theme

  • doesn't deal with structure

  2. Figurative language - consists of terms that aren't literal but are figurative

  • example: "I will rip your head off."
• Personification

  1. Personification: attributing human qualities or traits to a non-human object

  • example: "My sorrow, when she's here with me..."
• Hyperbole

  1. Hyperbole: deliberate exaggeration

  • example: "In a house the size of a postage stamp lived a man as big as a barge..."
• Understatement

  1. Understatement: opposite of hyperbole, lack of emphasis

  • example: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;... I love to hear her speak, yet well I know...That music hath a far more pleasing sound"
  • statement that represents something as smaller/less intense or important that it really is
• Simile and Metaphor

  1. Simile: a comparison between 2 unlike things using "like" or "as"

  • example: "Tom ate like a bear."

  2. Metaphor: a direct comparison between 2 unlike things

  • metaphors tend to be more extensive than similes
  • example: "Time is money." "Tom is a bear."

  Note: author's use of similes and metaphors provide a greater understanding by creating a basis of comparison/relationship between two things
• Two Kinds of Metaphor

  1. Metonymy: use of a word in place of another word that is closely associated with it

  • example: "The pen is mightier than the sword." Pen is metonymy for the written word, while sword is metonymy for physical violence.

  
  

  2. Synecdoche: use of a significant part to represent the whole

  • Greek for "simultaneous meaning"
  • example: "hired hands" = workers, "head" = can refer to cattle or people, "bread" = represents food