Figure of Speech

Figure of speech

• A figure of speech is a use of a word that diverges from its normal meaning,[citation needed] or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it.[citation needed] Figures of speech often provide emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity. However, clarity may also suffer from their use, as any figure of speech introduces an ambiguity between literal and figurative interpretation. A figure of speech is sometimes called a rhetoric or a locution.

Not all theories of meaning have a concept of "literal language" (see literal and figurative language). Under theories that do not, figure of speech is not an entirely coherent concept.
Rhetoric originated as the study of the ways in which a source text can be transformed to suit the goals of the person reusing the material. For this goal, classical rhetoric detected four fundamental operations[1] that can be used to transform a sentence or a larger portion of a text. They are: expansion, abridgement, switching, transferring.

Alliteration is a literary or rhetorical stylistic device that consists in repeating the same consonant sound at the beginning of several words in close succession. An example is the Mother Goose tongue-twister, "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers …".
In poetry, alliteration may also refer to repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to the poem's meter, are stressed as if they occurred at the beginning of a word, as in James Thomson's verse "Come…dragging the lazy languid Line along" [1].
Alliteration is usually distinguished from the mere repetition of the same sound in positions other than the beginning of each word — whether a consonant, as in "some mammals are clammy" (consonance) or a vowel, as in "mellow wedding bells" (assonance); but the term it is sometimes used in these broader senses.[citation needed], Alliteration may also include the use of different consonants with similar properties (labials, dentals, etc.) [2] or even the unwritten glottal stop that precedes virtually every word-initial vowel in the English language, as in the phrase "Apt alliteration's artful aid" (despite the unique pronunciation of the "a" in each word) [3].
Alliteration is commonly used in many languages, especially in poetry. Alliterative verse was an important ingredient of poetry in Old English and other old Germanic languages such as Old High German, Old Norse, and Old Saxon. On the other hand, its accidental occurrence is often viewed as a defect.
anaphora (Greek: ἀναφορά, "carrying back") is a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis. In contrast, an epistrophe (or epiphora) is repeating words at the clauses' ends. See also other figures of speech involving repetition.
One author well-known for his use of anaphora is Charles Dickens (seen in quote below). Some of his best-known works constantly portray their themes through use of this literary tool.
Examples
Strike as I would
Have struck those tyrants!
Strike deep as my curse!
Strike! and but once
Antithesis (Greek for "setting opposite", from ἀντί "against" + θέσις "position") is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition. In setting the opposite, an individual brings out of a contrast in the meaning (eg., the definition, interpretation, or semantics) by an obvious contrast in the expression.
Apostrophe (Greek ἀποστροφή, apostrophé, "turning away"; the final e being sounded) is an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a talker or writer breaks off and directs speech to an imaginary person or abstract quality or idea. In dramatic works and poetry, it is often introduced by the word "O" (not to be confused with the exclamation "oh").
It is related to personification, although in apostrophe, objects or abstractions are implied to have certain human qualities (such as understanding) by the very fact that the speaker is addressing them as he would a person in his presence.
Apostrophe is often used to convey extreme emotion, as in Claudius's impassioned speech in Hamlet.
Examples
• "Where, O death, thy sting? where, O death, thy victory?" 1 Corinthians 15:55, traditionally attributed to Saint Paul
• "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?" Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2
• "O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! / Thou art the ruins of the noblest man / That ever lived in the tide of times." Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1
Hyperbole (pronounced /haɪˈpɜrbəliː/ hye-PER-bə-lee[1]) comes from ancient Greek "ὑπερβολή" (meaning excess or exaggeration) and is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is rarely meant to be taken literally.
Hyperbole is used to create emphasis. It is a literary device often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. It is also a visual technique in which a deliberate exaggeration of a particular part of an image is employed. An example is the exaggeration of a person's facial feature in a political cartoon.
Examples
Some examples of use of hyperbole include:
• This cat smells like a year's worth of spoiled milk! ( The cat smells bad )
• These books weigh a ton. (These books are heavy.)
• I could sleep for a year. (I could sleep for a long time.)
• The path went on forever. (The path was really long.)
• He beat him into a pulp. (He beat him up very harshly.)
Irony (from the Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance) is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does and what one means or what is generally understood. Irony is a mode of expression that calls attention to the character's knowledge and that of the audience.
There is argument about what qualifies as ironic, but all senses of irony revolve around the perceived notion of an incongruity between what is expressed and what is intended, or between an understanding or expectation of a reality and what actually happens: the literal truth is in direct discordance to the perceived truth.
Metaphor (from Latin metaphoria; see the Greek origin below), is a figure of speech and or phrase that one word as being or equal to a second object in some way. This device is known for usage in literature, especially in poetry, where with few words, emotions and associations from one context are associated with objects and entities in a different context. It compares two subjects without using 'like' or 'as'. Compared to simile, the metaphor takes us one step further than the simile. Instead of asking us to picture one thing as being like another, the metaphor asks us to picture one thing as being the other. The term derives from Greek μεταφορά (metaphora), or "transference"[1], from μεταφέρω (metaphero) "to carry over, to transfer"[2] and that from μετά (meta), "between"[3] + φέρω (phero), "to bear, to carry".[4]
The idea of metaphor can be traced back to Aristotle who, in his “Poetics” (around 335 BC), defines “metaphor” as follows: “Metaphor is the application of a strange term either transferred from the genus and applied to the species or from the species and applied to the genus, or from one species to another or else by analogy.”[5] For the sake of clarity and comprehension it might additionally be useful to quote the following two alternative translations: “Metaphor is the application of an alien name by transference either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or by analogy, that is, proportion.”[6] Or, as Halliwell puts it in his translation: “Metaphor is the application of a word that belongs to another thing: either from genus to species, species to genus, species to species, or by analogy.”[7]
Therefore, the key aspect of a metaphor is a specific transference of a word from one context into another. With regard to the four kinds of metaphors which Aristotle distincts against each other the last one (transference by analogy) is the most eminent one so that all important theories on metaphor have a reference to this characterization.
Metonymy (pronounced /mɨˈtɒnɨmi/) is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept.[1]
The word "metonymy" comes from the Greek: μετωνυμία, metōnymía, "a change of name", from μετά, metá, "after, beyond" and -ωνυμία, -ōnymía, a suffix used to name figures of speech, from ὄνῠμα, ónyma or ὄνομα, ónoma, "name"[1]
Metonymy can involve the use of the same word, in which case it is a kind of polysemy, in which a single word has multiple related meanings (sememes), i.e. a large semantic field.
Metonymy may be instructively contrasted with metaphor. Both figures involve the substitution of one term for another. In metaphor, this substitution is based on similarity, while in metonymy, the substitution is based on contiguity.
Metaphor example: That man is a pig (using pig instead of unhygienic person. An unhygienic person is like a pig, but there is no contiguity between the two).
Metonymy example: The White House supports the bill (using The White House instead of the President. The President is not like The White House, but there is contiguity between them, in that the White House is where the President lives and works).
In cognitive linguistics, metonymy refers to the use of a single characteristic to identify a more complex entity and is one of the basic characteristics of cognition. It is common for people to take one well-understood or easy-to-perceive aspect of something and use that aspect to stand either for the thing as a whole or for some other aspect or part of it.
Metonymy is attested in cognitive processes underlying language (e.g. the infant's association of the nipple with milk). Objects that appear strongly in a single context emerge as cognitive labels for the whole concept, thus fueling linguistic labels such as "sweat" to refer to hard work that might produce it.
Onomatopoeia or onomatopœia, from the Greek ὀνοματοποιία (ὄνομα for "name" and ποιέω for "I make"), is one or more words that imitate or suggest the source of the sound they are describing. Common occurrences include animal noises, such as "oink" or "meow" or "roar". Onomatopoeia are not universally the same across all languages; they conform to some extent to the broader linguistic system they are part of; hence the sound of a clock may be tick tock in English and tik tak in Dutch or tic-tac in French.
An oxymoron (plural oxymora (greek plural) or, more often, oxymorons)("sharply dull" in Greek) is a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms. They appear in a range of contexts, from inadvertent errors such as extremely average, to deliberate puns like same difference, to literary oxymorons that have been carefully crafted to reveal a paradox.
The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective-noun combination. For example, the following line from Tennyson's Idylls of the King contains two oxymorons:
"And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."
Less often seen is noun-verb combinations such as the line
"The silence whistles"
A paradox is a statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition; or, it can be an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth (cf. Koan, Catuskoti). Typically, either the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. The word paradox is often used interchangeably with contradiction. Often, mistakenly, it is used to describe situations that are ironic.
The recognition of ambiguities, equivocations, and unstated assumptions underlying known paradoxes has led to significant advances in science, philosophy and mathematics. But many paradoxes, such as Curry's paradox, do not yet have universally accepted resolutions.
Sometimes the term paradox is used for situations that are merely surprising. The birthday paradox, for instance, is unexpected but perfectly logical. The logician Willard V. O. Quine distinguishes falsidical paradoxes, which are seemingly valid, logical demonstrations of absurdities, from veridical paradoxes, such as the birthday paradox, which are seeming absurdities that are nevertheless true.[1] Paradoxes in economics tend to be the veridical type, typically counterintuitive outcomes of economic theory. In literature a paradox can be any contradictory or obviously untrue statement, which resolves itself upon later inspection.
Personification is an ontological metaphor in which a thing or abstraction is represented as a person.[1]
The term "personification" may apply to:
1. A description of an inanimate object as being a living person or animal as in: "The sun shone brightly down on me as if she were shining for me alone". In this example the sun is depicted as if capable of intent, and is referenced with the pronoun "she" rather than "it."
2. The act of personifying.
3. A certain quality or idea; an embodiment or exemplification: "He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative" (Ralph Ellison).
4. An artistic representation of an abstract quality or idea as a person, for example the four cardinal virtues or nine Muses.
A simile is a figure of speech comparing two unlike things, often introduced with the word "like" or "as".[1] Even though similes and metaphors are both forms of comparison, similes allow the two ideas to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas metaphors compare two things without using "like" or "as". For instance, a simile that compares a person with a bullet would go as follows: "John was a record-setting runner and as fast as a speeding bullet." A metaphor might read something like, "John was a record-setting runner. That speeding bullet could zip past you without you even knowing he was there."
A mnemonic for a simile is that "a simile is similar or alike."
Similes have been widely used in literature for their expressiveness as a figure of speech:
• Curley was flopping like a fish on a line.[2]
• The very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric.[3]
• Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus.[4]
Synecdoche (pronounced /sɪˈnɛkdəki/ si-NEK-də-kee; from Greek synekdoche (συνεκδοχή), meaning "simultaneous understanding") is a figure of speech in which:
• a term denoting a part of something is used to refer to the whole thing (Pars pro toto), or
• a term denoting a thing (a "whole") is used to refer to part of it (Totum pro parte), or
• a term denoting a specific class of thing is used to refer to a larger, more general class, or
• a term denoting a general class of thing is used to refer to a smaller, more specific class, or
• a term denoting a material is used to refer to an object composed of that material.
Understatement is a form of speech in which a lesser expression is used than what would be expected. This is not to be confused with euphemism, where a polite phrase is used in place of a harsher or more offensive expression.
Understatement is a staple of humor in English-speaking cultures, especially in British humour. For example, in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, a suburban dinner party is invaded by Death, who wears a long black cloak and carries a scythe. He is the Grim Reaper; the party is over; the guests must all go with him. "Well," says one party guest, "that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?" In another scene, an Army officer has just lost his leg. When asked how he feels, he looks down at his bloody stump and responds, "Stings a bit."
Notable historic examples
Event: The well-known Victorian critique of Cleopatra's behavior: "So unlike the home life of our own dear Queen!"[citation needed]
Event: During the Kuala Lumpur to Perth leg of British Airways Flight 9 on 24 June 1982, volcanic ash causes all four engines of the Boeing 747 aircraft to fail. Although pressed for time as the aircraft rapidly lost altitude, Captain Eric Moody still managed to make an announcement to the passengers. Comment: "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."[citation needed]
Event: A 2006 interview regarding current affairs in the Middle East with the Egyptian Foreign Minister. Comment by the Foreign Minister: "I think there's a problem between Shias and Sunnis". (BBC World Service, 23:50, Australian Eastern Standard Time, May 18, 2006)