Remember some more Figures of

Speech
• Alliteration
The repetition of an initial consonant sound.
• The repetitionThe repetition of an initial 
consonant sound, as in "a peck of
pickled peppers.“
• "The soul selects her own society."
(Emily Dickinson)
• "Good men are gruff and grumpy, cranky,
crabbed, and cross."
(Clement Freud)
 Anaphora
• The repetition of the same word or phrase at the
beginning of successive clauses or verses.
(Contrast with epiphora and epistrophe.)
• A rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or
phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.
• By building toward a climax, anaphora can
create a strong emotional effect.
• E.g. "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life
insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a
home in the country. What I had was a coat,
a hat and a gun."
(Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely)
• "Here comes the shadow not looking where
it is going,
And the whole night will fall; it is time.
Here comes the little wind which the hour
Drags with it everywhere like an empty
wagon through leaves.
Here comes my ignorance shuffling after
them
Asking them what they are doing.
(W.S. Merwin, "Sire." The Second Four
Books of Poems. Copper Canyon Press,
1993)
• "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in
France, we shall fight on the seas and
oceans, we shall fight with growing
confidence and growing strength in the
air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the
cost may be, we shall fight on the
beaches, we shall fight on the landing
grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in
the streets, we shall fightin the hills; we
shall never surrender."
(Winston Churchill, speech to the House of
Commons, June 4, 1940)
 Antithesis
• The juxtaposition (the fact of two things being seen or
placed close together with contrasting effect.) of contrasting
ideas in balanced phrases.
• Definition:
• A rhetorical term for the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas
in balanced phrases or clauses. Plural: antitheses.
Adjective:antithetical.
• Examples and Observations:
• "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing."
(Goethe)
•  "You're easy on the eyes
Hard on the heart."
(Terri Clark)
• "We must learn to live together as brothers
or perish together as fools.“
• "And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying
groans."
(Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice by
William Shakespeare)
 Apostrophe
• Breaking off discourse to address some
absent person or thing, some abstract
quality, an inanimate object, or a
nonexistent character.
• A figure of speech in which some absent or
nonexistent person or thing is addressed as
if present and capable of understanding.
• Examples and Observations:
• "Hello darkness! My old friend
I've come to talk with you again . . .."
(Paul Simon, "The Sounds of Silence")
• "O western wind! When wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?"
(anonymous, 16th c.)
• "Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the
millionth time the reality of experience and
to forge in the smithy of my soul the
uncreated conscience of my race."
• Assonance is the figurative term used to refer
to the repetition of a vowel sound in a line of
text or poetry. The words have to be close
enough together for the repetition to be
noticeable.
 Tongue twisters often use a combination of 
alliteration (repetition of same beginning
consonant sound) and two different forms
of assonance-or the repetition of two
different vowel sounds. This is what makes
them so difficult to say.
 Assonance is used for some of the same
reasons as alliteration. It can affect the
rhythm, tone, and mood of a text. The
repetition of certain vowel sounds-think short
vowels sounds from the letters u or o-can
create a melancholy mood.
 Examples of Assonance:
 Examples of Assonance:
 1. The light of the fire is a sight. (repetition of
the long i sound)
 2. Go slow over the road. (repetition of the
long o sound)
 3. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers (repetition of the short e and long i
sounds)
 4. Sally sells sea shells beside the sea shore
(repetition of the short e and long e sounds)
 5. Try as I might, the kite did not fly.
(repetition of the long i sound)
 Examples of Assonance in Literature:
 1. Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabelle Lee": "And so
all the night-tide, I lie down by the side of my
darling-my darling-my life and my bride"
(repetition of the long i sound)
 2. William Blake's "Tyger": "Tyger, Tyger
burning bright in the forest of the night"
(repetition of the long i sound)
 3. From William Wordsworth's "Daffodils": "A
host of golden daffodils" (repetition of the
long o sound)
 4. From the movie My Fair Lady: "The rain in
Spain stays mainly on the plain." (repetition
of the long a sound)
 Euphemism
•
The substitution of an inoffensive ( soft/
non-hurting)term for one considered
offensively ( bluntly)explicit.( showing)
• e.g. He passed away ( dead) in his sleep.
•  
 Hyperbole
•
An extravagant ( exaggerate) statement; the
use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of
emphasis or heightened effect. E.g. 10
thousand I saw in a glance. ( Poem
Daffodils)
• (ii) millions of stars can I see today in the
night sky.
 Irony
• The use of words to convey the opposite of
their literal meaning. A statement or
situation where the meaning is contradicted
by the appearance or presentation of the
idea.
– verbal – word or phrase used to suggest the
opposite of its usual meaning
– situational – event occurs that directly
contradicts expectations
– dramatic – contradiction between what a
character thinks and what the reader knows to
be true
 Situational Irony Examples:
 1. There are roaches infesting the office of a
pest control service.
 2. A plumber spends all day working on leaky
faucets and comes home to find a pipe has
burst in his home.
 Verbal Irony Examples:
 1. Looking at her son's messy room, Mom
says, "Wow, you could win an award for
cleanliness!"
 2. On the way to school, the school bus gets a
flat tire and the bus driver says, "
 Excellent! This day couldn't start off any
better!"
 Dramatic Irony Examples:
 1. The audience knows that a killer is hiding in
the closet, but the girl in the horror movie
does not.
 2. The reader knows that a storm is coming,
but the children playing on the playground do
not.
 Examples of Irony in Literature:
 1. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the
audience/reader knows that Juliet has faked
her death, but Romeo does not and he thinks
she is really dead. (dramatic irony)
 2. In To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the
main character Scout goes to school and is
already able to read. While one would expect
a teacher to be pleased about that, Scout's
teacher does not like that she is already able
to read. (situational irony)
 3. In Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, Mr.
Darcy says of Elizabeth Bennett that she is
not "handsome enough to tempt me," but he
falls in love with her in spite of himself.
(verbal irony)
 Litotes
• A figure of speech consisting of an
understatement in which an affirmative is
expressed by negating its opposite.
• The food was not bad.
• It was no ordinary.
• Reaching the moon was no easy task.
 Metonymy
• A figure of speech in which one word or
phrase is substituted for another with which
it is closely associated; also, the rhetorical
strategy of describing something indirectly
by referring to things around it.
• metonymy – substitute one word for
another
• “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me
your ears!” (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)
 Onomatopoeia
• The use of words that imitate the sounds
associated with the objects or actions they
refer to.
• e.g. It cracked and growled, and roared and
howled like noises in a sound
 Oxymoron
• A figure of speech in which incongruous or
contradictory terms appear side by side.
 Great Depression
 Jumbo shrimp
 Cruel to be kind
 Pain for pleasure
 Clearly confused
 Act naturally
 Beautifully painful
 Painfully beautiful
 Deafening silence
 Pretty ugly
 Pretty fierce
 Pretty cruel
 Definitely maybe
 Living dead
 Walking dead
 Only choice
 Amazingly awful
 Alone together
 Virtual reality
 Random order
 paradox
• – a statement that seems to be contradictory
but that actually presents a truth
– “Thou canst not every day give me thy heart; /
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest
it…” (John Donne, “Lovers’ Infiniteness)
  "I can resist anything, except temptation." -
Oscar Wilde
 "I like a smuggler. He is the only honest thief."
- Charles Lamb
 "And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."
 - Alfred Tennyson
 "Modern dancing is so old fashioned." - 
Samuel Goldwyn
 "A business that makes nothing but money is
a poor business." - Henry Ford
 "I am busy doing nothing." - Oxymorons
 "A little pain never hurt anyone." - 
Word Explorations
 "I am a deeply superficial person." - 
Andy Warhol
 "No one goes to that restaurant anymore - It's
always too crowded." - Yogi Berra
 "We are not anticipating any emergencies." - 
Word Explorations
 "A joke is actually an extremely really serious
issue." - Winston Churchill
 "I like humanity, but I loathe persons." - 
Edna St. Vincent Millay
 "Always be sincere, even though you do not
necessarily mean it." - Irene Peter
 "I generally advise persons never ever to
present assistance." - P.G. Wodehouse
 symbol
• – anything that stands for or represents
something else
– The play MacBeth uses blood, both real and
imagined, as a symbol of guilt, both of
MacBeth and Lady MacBeth.
 climax
• – arrangement of words, phrases, clauses in
an order of increasing importance
– “Let a man acknowledge obligations to his
family, his country, and his God.”
 Pun
• A play on words, sometimes on different
senses of the same word and sometimes on
the similar sense or sound of different
words.
• Not on the sole but on the soul, harsh jew,
thou mak’st thy knife keen.
 Synecdoche
•
A figure of speech in which a part is used to
represent the whole (for
example, ABCsfor alphabet) or the whole
for a part ("England won the World Cup in
1966").
• All hands to the pump
• A young man of twenty summers
 Understatement
• A figure of speech in which a writer or a
speaker deliberately makes a situation seem
less important or serious than it is
• (meiosis) – saying less than is actually
meant, generally in an ironic way
• “I have to have this operation. It isn't very
serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the
brain.” (J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye)
 Rhetorical Questions

• Fig of Speech in the form of a question to

encourage reflection and asked for
rhetorical effect rather than for getting an
answer.
• Is India not a democracy?
• Can you get oil out of sand?
• Can anyone here say that I am dishonest?
 allusion
• – a reference to a well-known person, place,
event, literary work, work of art
– “I am not what I am.” (Shakespeare, Othello)
 Chiasmus

A verbal pattern in which the second half of

an expression is balanced against the first
but with the parts reversed.
–
“By day the frolic and the dance by night.”
(Samuel Johnson)
 analogy –
• a comparison between two unlike things; used to
describe something unfamiliar by pointing out its
similarities to something familiar [this implies
that all analogies are similes or metaphors, which
is not the case; analogies are also used to compare
relationships]
– “Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted
peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops
come home, the more will be demanded.” (Henry
Kissinger in a Memo to President Richard Nixon)
– apple is to fruit as carrot is to vegetable (apple is
related to fruit in the same way the carrot is related to
vegetable)
Rhythm

  is the repetition of a pattern of sounds in

poetry. Rhythm is created by the alternation
of long and short sounds and stressed and
unstressed syllables. There are several
different type of units of rhythm in poetry. The
one that is most commonly studied and
discussed is ambic pentameter. In iambic
pentameter, each line of poetry has 10
syllables that alternate in an unstressed,
stressed rhythmic pattern.
 Examples of Rhythm:
 Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. Here are a
couple of lines from one of Shakespeare's sonnets (stressed
syllables are bolded):
 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
 Coral is farmore redthan her lips' red.
 "T'was the Night Before Christmas" has a rhythm that is
created by using a pattern of two unstressed and one
stressed syllable:
 T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house.
 Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse.
 Sarcasm is very strong verbal irony. Remember, verbal
irony is when someone says the opposite of what they
really mean. When we use sarcasm, we say the opposite of
what we really mean. The true meaning of the words is
often given away by the tone of voice and facial
expression. When we encounter sarcasm in writing, we
can usually recognize it by the contrast between what is
said and what is happening or the actions of the
characters.
 Examples of Sarcasm:
 Your friend splashes mud on your new shoes, and you say,
"That's great-I really needed a little brown to go on there."
 You ask your mom if you are really grounded, and she says,
"No, I am just pretending."
 Your teacher says to the class, "Math is so fun!" and
someone responds, "It's a real barrel of laughs."
Motif- When an idea or a thing is repeated throughout a text, and
it is used in a symbolic manner, it is a motif. Motifs in
literary works help writers create mood, and help them to
highlight important ideas and themes that emerge throughout the
work.
Examples of Motif:
In To Kill a Mockingbird, there are many "small town" images and
values represented. For example, there is a school play, where
Scout and her classmates represent the various agricultural
products of the county. There is a comforting scene with
neighbors gathering after a fire. Things move "slowly" and people
have nowhere to go and nothing to do.
A common motif in fairy tales is the wicked
stepmother. In Cinderella, the wicked stepmother
forces Cinderella to clean house and will not allow her
to go to the prince's ball. In Snow White, the wicked
stepmother hates Snow White because of her beauty
and plots to kill 
Didacticism
 DidacticismDidacticism is a philosophy that adheres to the
notion that texts should be instructional as well as
entertaining. A didactic text is one that teaches and instructs,
and originally, the idea was that learning should be done in an
intriguing manner. Over time, the term didactic has taken on a
negative connotation, as a text that seeks to instruct or teach
is sometimes seen as dull or "preachy."
 Examples of Didacticism:
 John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress-one of the more famous
examples
 The text seeks to teach the reader about traveling the road to
Heaven, which is difficult and obstacle-filled. There are
characters in the play, such as "Obstacle" and "Mr. Worldly
Wiseman." The main character who is traveling the road is
called "Christian."
 The Bible is filled with parables that are didactic. Jesus often instructed his
disciples and crowds of listeners through parables. One of these is the
parable of the Prodigal Son. It is about a father with two sons. One takes his
interitance, leaves home, and squanders his money. He ends up eating with
pigs and decides to go home. Thinking he will be welcomed as a servant, his
father is overjoyed to see him, and plans a big feast. The lesson is that God
loves his children-even those who stray.
 Another parable in the Bible is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus was
asked about neighbors. He told a story of a Jewish man who was attacked
and robbed. As he lay on the side of the road, hurt, Jewish travelers passed
him by. But a Samaritan (Jews did not get along with Samaritans) stopped to
help him and made sure he was taken care of until he was well. The lesson is
that the neighbor is the one who took the time to help him.
 To Kill a Mockingbird is didactic in many respects. Atticus Finch is the voice of
moral teaching, as he instructs his children about prejudice, courage, and
doing the right thing even when you are in the minority. Through Atticus'
words to Scout and Jem, the reader is also taught lessons about these
complicated issues.
Conceit
  conceit is a comparison between two very unlike
things, whose dissimilarity is very obvious.
While comparisons compare unlike things, a conceit is a
special type of comparison because the two things
compared are so unalike that it gives us pause.

Conceits are used to create unique comparisons and to
describe unlikely situations.

 Examples of Conceit:
 Marriage is like getting a root canal.
 Childbirth is like having a nail driven through your foot.
 Diction
  is word choice, or the style of speaking that a writer, speaker, or
character uses. The diction that you use when you speak or write
should be matched to purpose or audience.
 In formal writing-essays, speeches-diction should be formal. Words
used should be used correctly, so that the writer or speaker sounds
intelligent. However, if you are speaking with your
friends, diction can be more casual-you may use informal words and
even slang. In a work of fiction, the diction of the characters often
tells us a lot about the characters. We can tell if they are intelligent,
educated, or even what part of the world or country they are from.
 Examples of Diction:
 Hey, what's up, man? Lookin' cool in those shades you're wearin'!
 The patient has experienced acute trauma to the right femur, and
must have surgery stat.
 Aren't you a cute little fella? I bet your mommy is in love with you-
Fallacy

 A fallacy is an argument that is based on

faulty logic. When writers or speakers
present arguments, they support their
arguments with evidence. A fallacy is a piece
of evidence-or a reason that the writer has
given to support the argument-that is not
logical.
Allegory
  allegory is a text that has a hidden meaning. It can be
a story or a poem, and the meaning behind it is usually
political or moral. In an allegory, the characters often
symbolize a concept or idea from real life.
 An allegory is a type of extended metaphor. The
story or poem is used to draw an extended
comparison between two different things-a character
or event in the text and something in real life.
 Many works of art are also allegorical, with the
pictures representing people or ideas in real life.
 Orwell's Animal Farm-animals in the story and their
interactions stand for political figures and events
 Pathetic fallacy 
 Pathetic fallacy is a literary device that attributes human
qualities and emotions to inanimate objects of nature.
The word pathetic in the term is not used in the
derogatory sense of being miserable; rather, it stands for
“imparting emotions to something else.”
 Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights is full of pathetic
fallacies. The title itself shows the use of this device, as
the word wuthering means “blowing strongly with a
roaring sound.” Therefore, “Wuthering Heights” means
uproarious and aggressive weather that represents the
nature of its residents. There are lots of instances in the
novel in which the mood of nature portrays the nature of
events in the narrative.
The feeling of melancholy has been described by
attributing the human emotion  of weeping to the
clouds.
Eg.  I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (By William
Wordsworth)
William Wordsworth, in his poem I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud, says:
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,”
The poet describes clouds as lonely, in order to describe
his own state.
 Cacophony
If we speak literally, cacophony points to a
situation in which there is a mixture of harsh
and inharmonious sounds. In literature, however,
the term refers to the use of words with sharp,
harsh, hissing, and unmelodious sounds –
primarily those of consonants – to achieve
desired results
 Look at the following excerpt from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels:
 “And being no stranger to the art of war, I have him a description of
cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder,
swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines,
countermines, bombardments, sea-fights…”
 In order to describe the destructive consequences of war, the writer
chooses words and arranges them in an order that produces an effect
that is unmelodious, harsh, and jarring, which corresponds with the
subject matter.
Idiom

 The term idiom refers to a set expression or a

phrase comprising two or more words. An
interesting fact regarding the device is that the
expression is not interpreted literally. The phrase
is understood to mean something quite different
from what individual words of the phrase would
imply. Alternatively, it can be said that the phrase
is interpreted in a figurative sense. Further,
idioms vary in different cultures and countries.
 “Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes
a little difficult to get it to the mint.”
(By Don Marquis)
 The statement quoted above uses “silver lining” as
an idiom which means some auspicious moment is
lurking behind the cloud or the difficult time.

e.g. graveyard shift

if we play our cards right