KEY AP LANGUAGE TERMS

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

FIGURE OF SPEECH

• A device used to produce figurative language. Many compare dissimilar things. Ex: apostrophe, hyperbole, irony, metaphor, metonymy, understatement, etc.

APOSTROPHE

• a rhetorical device in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person, or an inanimate object or abstraction.

HYPERBOLE• exaggeration for the sake of

emphasis in a figure of speech not meant literally. Ex: “This book weighs a ton!”

UNDERSTATEMENT• AKA Meiosis – The opposite of

hyperbole. It is a type of verbal irony in which something is purposely represented as being far less important than it actually is.

Understatement is a figure of speech employed by writers or speakers to intentionally make a situation seem less important than it really is.

For example, you win 10 million dollars in a lottery. You tell a news reporter “I am delighted”, you make an understatement. Similarly, suppose a team loses to its opponent 50 to 0 in a soccer match and the captain of the team says in a post-match ceremony says, “We did not do well” is an understatement because he tries to decrease the intensity of the loss.

An understatement usually has an ironic effect as an equally intense response is expected in severe situations but the statement in response is opposite i.e. less intense but of course with an ironical tone. For instance, your friend returns your new coat with blots all over it and in response you make an ironical understatement, “It doesn’t look too bad”.

Therefore, an understatement is opposite to another figure of speech hyperbole or an overstatement.

Examples of Understatement

• It is an understatement to say “Deserts are sometimes hot, dry and sandy” while describing deserts of the world.

• It is an understatement to say “He is not too thin” while describing an obese person

• It is an understatement to say “It rained a bit more than usual” while describing an area being flooded after a heavy rain fall.

Understatement in Literature

In Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield says:

“I have to have this operation. It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.”

• In another fantasy novel Consider Phlebas, an understatement has been made about a war that lasted for 48 years and a month and took lives of over 851 billion beings.

• “A small, short war that rarely extended throughout more than .02% of the galaxy and .01% by stellar population. … the galaxy’s elder civilisations rate the Idiran-Culture war as … one of those singularly interesting Events they see so rarely these days.”

An understatement is a tool that helps to develop other figures of speech such as irony and sarcasm by deliberately decreasing the severity of a situation when an intense response is expected by the listeners or the readers.

LITOTES

• Understatement employed for the purpose of enhancing the effect of the ideas expressed. Contains a negative: “I’m not unhappy”

Examples of Litotes

"Are you also aware, Mrs. Bueller, that Ferris does not have what we consider to be an exemplary attendance record?"

(Jeffrey Jones as Principal Ed Rooney, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1986)

"Oh, you think you're so special because you get to play Picture Pages up there? Well, my five year old daughter could do that and let me tell you, she's not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed.“

(Allison Janney as Bren in Juno, 2007)

"I am not unaware how the productions of the Grub Street brotherhood have of late years fallen under many prejudices."

(Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, 1704)

"for life's not a paragraph

And death I think is no parenthesis"

(e.e. cummings, "since feeling is first")

METAPHOR

• A comparison, like a simile but usually implied and without a comparative word such as like or as. Ex: “My heart is a singing bird”; “He wolfed his food.”

In simple English, when you portray a person, place, thing, or an action as being something else, even though it is not actually that “something else,” you are speaking metaphorically. “He is a black sheep of the family” is a metaphor because he is not a sheep and is not even black. However, we can use this comparison to describe association of the black sheep with that person. Black sheep is an unusual animal and typically stays away from the herd, and the person you are describing shares similar characteristics.

TYPES OF METAPHOR

• Extended: an idea sustained throughout the work

• Common or Dead: has been used so much it has lost its figurative meaning & is taken literally (eye of a needle, head of the class)

Common/Dead Metaphors

Metaphors aren’t just for poems or songs! In fact, we use them all of the time. We cannot avoid them. Metaphors are sometimes constructed through our common language. They are called conventional metaphors. Calling a person a “night owl” or an “early bird” or saying “life is a journey” are examples of common conventional metaphors commonly heard and understood by most of us. Below are some more conventional metaphors we often hear in our daily life:

• My brother was boiling mad. (This implies he was too angry.)

• The assignment was a breeze. (This implies that the assignment was not difficult.)

• It is going to be clear skies from now on. (This implies that clear skies are not a threat and life is going to be without hardships)

• The skies of his future began to darken. (Darkness is a threat; therefore, this implies that the coming times are going to be hard for him.)

• Her voice is music to his ears. (This implies that her voice makes him feel happy)

Formal and Mixed Metaphor“Shall I Compare Thee to a summer’s Day”William Shakespeare was the best exponent of the use of metaphors. His poetical works and dramas all make wide-ranging use of metaphors.

“Sonnet 18,”also known as “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day,” is an extended metaphor between the love of the speaker and the fairness of the summer season. He writes that “thy eternal summer,” here taken to mean the love of the subject, “shall not fade.”

“Before high-pil’d books, in charact’ry / Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain,”

The great Romantic poet John Keats suffered great losses in his life – the death of his father in an accident, and of his mother and brother with the tuberculosis.

When he began displaying signs of tuberculosis himself at the age of 22, he wrote “When I Have Fears,” a poem rich with metaphors concerning life and death. In the line “before high-pil’d books, in charact’ry / Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain”, he employs a double-metaphor. Writing poetry is implicitly compared with reaping and sowing, and both these acts represent the emptiness of a life unfulfilled creatively.

METONYMY

• The use of the name of one thing for that of another associated with or suggested by it. For example, “the White House” of the “President.”

• Metonymy is different from a metaphor. A metaphor draws resemblance between two different things as in “Her face shines like a sun.” Face and sun are two different things without any association but it attempts to describe one thing in terms of another based on a supposed similarity. Metonymy, however, develops relation on the grounds of close associations as in “The White House is concerned about terrorism.” The White House here represents the people who work in it

Examples of Metonymy in Everyday Life

• England decides to keep check on immigration. (England refers to the government.)

• The suits were at meeting. (The suits stand for businesspersons.)

• Pen is mightier than sword. (Pen refers to written words and sword to military force.)

• The Oval Office was busy in work. (“The Oval Office” is metonymy as it stands for people at work in the office.)

• Let me give you a hand. (Hand means help.)

1. The given lines are from Shakespeare’s “Julies Caesar” Act I.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

Mark Anthony uses “ears” to say that he wants the people present there to listen to him attentively. It is metonymy because the word “ears” replaces the concept of attention.

2. This line is from Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind.

“I’m mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before it secedes or it would have ruined the Christmas parties.”

Scarlett uses “Georgia” to point out everything that makes up the state: citizens, politician, government etc. It is a metonymy extremely common in the modern world, where a name of a country or state refers to a whole nation and its government. Thus, it renders brevity to the ideas.

Generally, metonymy is used in developing literary symbolism i.e. it gives more profound meanings to otherwise common ideas and objects. By using metonymy, texts exhibit deeper or hidden meanings and thus drawing readers’ attention. In addition, the use of metonymy helps achieve conciseness. For instance, “Rifles were guarding the gate” is more concise than “The guards with rifles in their hands were guarding the gate.”

Furthermore, metonymy, like other literary devices, is employed to add a poetic color to words to make them come to life. The simple ordinary things are described in a creative to insert this “life” factor to the literary works.

• It is an understatement to say “Deserts are sometimes hot, dry and sandy” while describing deserts of the world.

• It is an understatement to say “It rained a bit more than usual” while describing an area being flooded after a heavy rain fall.

• It is an understatement to say “It was O.K.” when a topper was asked about his result.

• It is an understatement to say “It is a bit cold today” when temperature is 5 degrees below the melting point

Personification

Personification is a figure of speech in which a thing, an idea or an animal is given human attributes. The non-human objects are portrayed in such a way that we feel they have the ability to act like human beings. For example, when we say, “The sky weeps” we are giving the sky the ability to feel that is a human quality. Thus, we can say that the sky has been personified in the given sentence.

Some common examples of personification are given below:

• Look at my car. She is a beauty, isn’t it so?

• The wind whispered through dry grass.

• The flowers danced in the gentle breeze.

• Time and tide waits for none.

• The fire swallowed the entire forest.

Literary Examples of Personification

Taken from L. M. Montgomery’s “The Green Gables Letters”,

“I hied me away to the woods—away back into the sun-washed alleys carpeted with fallen gold and glades where the moss is green and vivid yet. The woods are getting ready to sleep—they are not yet asleep but they are disrobing and are having all sorts of little bed-time conferences and whisperings and good-nights.”The lack of activity in the forest has been beautifully personified as forest getting ready to sleep, busy in bed-time chatting and wishing good-nights, all of which relate typically to human customs.

Taken from Act I, Scene II of Romeo and Juliet,

“When well-appareled April on the heel

Of limping winter treads.”

April cannot put on a dress, and winter does not limp and it does not have heel on which a month can walk. Shakespeare personifies month of April and winter season by giving them two distinct human qualities.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson employs personification in her poem “Have You Got A Brook In Your Little Heart.”

“Have you got a brook in your little heart,

Where bashful flowers blow,

And blushing birds go down to drink,

And shadows tremble so?”

What is personified?

Katherine Mansfield wrote in her short story “How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped,”

“Pearl Button swung on the little gate in front of the House of Boxes. It was the early afternoon of a sunshiny day with little winds playing hide-and-seek in it.”

What is personified?

Personification is not merely a decorative device; it serves the purpose of giving deeper meanings to literary texts.

•adds vividness to expressions as we always look at the world from human perspective.

•bring inanimate things to life, so that their nature and actions are understood in a better way.

•Because it is easier for us to relate to something that is human or possess human traits. Its use encourages us to develop a perspective that is new as well as creative.