Hey, this is Mr. Sato. Let's learn about figurative language.
Figurative language is just saying one thing and meaning
something different from what you appear to be saying on the surface.
They're figures of speech.
When you say, "it cost me an arm and a leg,"
you're using figurative language,
I would hope.
You should know how to recognize it when you're reading and
how to use it when you're writing.
Actually, you probably already use figurative language,
but just might not be up on the terminology.
So, we're going to look at these 8 kinds of figurative language.
Also, there's a short quiz at the end if you want to test your knowledge.
First, metaphor.
This is when you say one thing IS another thing, like if I talk about
my elderly dog being an inert lump of coal.
This is what he looks like. As you can see,
he isn't actually a combustible black rock of carbonized plant matter;
I'm just saying he hardly ever moves and
sleeps 23 hours a day. That's a metaphor in the form of a noun.
My dog = a lump of coal. This noun is that noun. That's a metaphor.
But a lot of the time, metaphors take the form of verbs,
like I was "eclipsed by my brother's popularity,
or the book "sailed" across the room.
Or my mother "erupted" when she saw my report card.
Those statements aren't meant literally, because moons and planets eclipse.
Boats sail. And only volcanoes erupt, literally.
Hidden in this sentence about tennis star Rafael Nadal, the adjective is a metaphor.
"Nadal's most characteristic stroke (is)
his searing, spinning, miserable-to-return forehand drive."
Spot the metaphor? Searing isn't something a tennis ball can be,
not literally; it is something a red-hot skillet does
to a steak. But I guess those forehand drives are powerful
and intimidating, painful to handle, just like a red-hot skillet.
The feelings and associations that come
with the red-hot skillet rub off on our image of Nadal's tennis playing.
It isn't just fun to listen to; it adds a shade of meaning.
That's what figurative language does.
Similes are my favorite kind of figurative language,
and they're really easy to explain.
This is when you say one thing is LIKE another, as opposed to saying
it IS something, as you would do with a metaphor.
Now, a simile can't actually be literally like that thing;
"Walt Frazier stood as tall as a library bookcase" isn't actually a simile,
because it could literally be true.
A simile is a figure of speech, so it must imaginatively compare two things
that aren't actually, literally, the same. A simile would be, "Walt Frazier stood
as tall as the skyscrapers silhouetting the New York horizon." Not literally true,
but figuratively true.
A simile uses "like" or "as."
If you said, "They were as quiet as a quartet waiting for the downbeat,"
that's a simile and a good one.
Scott Russell Sanders wrote that "guilt burns like acid in my veins."
Love that phrase.Or how about this one from a song lyric:
"He's got a mind like a sewer and a heart like a fridge."
Or this one. This one belongs in the simile hall of fame:
"The Countess had a smile like the first scratch on a new car.
It was immanently regrettable."
I could go on with favorite similes all day, endlessly and as tediously as
the seconds on a clock, but I'll restrain myself.
Personification is when you talk about an inanimate object
as if it were a living thing.
"The old car coughed and wheezed as it struggled up the hill."
A car doesn't actually breathe or struggle; it's just a figure of speech.
We are comparing it to a feeble old man.
We're attributing human qualities to something inanimate.
Talking about "Mother Nature" is personification.
Or when journalist Dan Rather, who is from Texas, said of
the 2004 presidential election, "This race is humming along like Ray Charles,"
we know perfectly well that an election doesn't hum,
but we get what he means, because we know how personification works.
Hyperbole is just a big word that means exaggeration used to make a point,
or to create a certain effect.
If you say that your friend "speaks something like a million languages,"
that's hyperbole, but you've made your point; your friend speaks
an impressive number of languages.
"I am so hungry I could eat two cows, a bale of hay,
and still have room for dessert."
Hyperbole.
Or "Mr. Sato is never going to stop talking."
Or it was so quiet, you could have heard a pin drop."
All examples of hyperbole, a form of figurative language.
Understatement is the opposite of hyperbole.
Lots of teenagers are masters of this one.
It's when you say a thing is less than it is, generally to be humorous.
If your town closes down Main Street
and has a huge and rowdy parade because your town's team has
won the championship, you might say, "The town had a little party and invited
700,000 of their closest friends."
Or if you're talking about The Incredible Hulk ripping open a truck with his hands,
and you say, "He's got a bit of a temper," that's understatement.
Or, "yeah, he's not happy."
Idioms are just expressions that make sense if you're familiar with the language.
They're metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech
that have become common expressions. Like if you were to say,
"He hit it out of the ballpark," someone who's unfamiliar with our
language might assume you were talking about baseball,
when you were actually just using a familiar metaphor
to say someone did something really well. Other idioms are "It's raining
cats and dogs" and "that ship has sailed," and "you're pulling my leg."
If you're from another country, you'd be like, "what? It's raining cats and dogs?
What are you talking about?"
Idioms can be cliches, overused expressions, which should be avoided,
but they can also be a lot of fun if used well.
You know, side note, other countries have their own idioms.
If you're in Iran and someone says,
"he put his hat on my head," he or she means "he pulled a trick on me"
or he "swindled me." It's a figure of speech.
So if a foreigner doesn't understand your idioms, cut him some slack.
That'd be you if you jumped on an airplane
and learned somebody else's language.
An analogy is a simile on steroids. If you said, this family is like a stalled car,
that's a simile, because you said
this thing is like that thing. Right? But if you went on to say,
"a family is like a car. The parent is like the steering wheel because
he or she directs the car, but the kids are like the wheels.
If the wheels won't move, the steering wheel is powerless and no one
is going anywhere. So we need to work together if we want to move forward."
When you explain the relationship between the parts of a simile
in detail, it becomes an analogy.
Teenagers know all about irony. They usually call it sarcasm.
If a girl said, "You know what I love?
Changing a flat tire when it's pouring rain. Good times." That's irony.
There are at least three kinds of irony. But here we're talking about verbal irony:
saying one thing and meaning something very different,
usually the opposite. Calling a tall person Shorty
as a joke because everyone knows he's tall, is verbal irony.
Eating a delicious bowl of chocolate ice cream and saying,
"It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it"
is irony. You're saying one thing and meaning the opposite.
But irony can simply mean something different, not necessarily the opposite.
Like in "The Cask of Amontillado,"
by Edgar Allan Poe, (Spoiler alert) the first-person narrator is planning
to kill someone named Fortunato. Well, there's irony number one:
Fortunato isn't "fortunate" at all; he's about to die.
But when Fortunato says, "I shall not die of a cough," the killer-to-be says,
"True, true." That's irony, because the reader knows
that the killer means, "that's true" because he isn't going to die of a cough.
The narrator is going to kill him.
He says one thing; we know he means something very different.
That's a kind of verbal irony too.
And one last note on figurative language: be original. "Fast as a racecar" is a simile,
yes, and it's perfectly acceptable, but it's not a very clever one.
Or: "Judging a book by its cover" is a metaphor,
but it's also a cliche. It's overused, so it isn't very effective.
Try to think of fresh, original metaphors your reader hasn't heard before.
Personally, as a teacher, I prefer students to take risks even it means
they come up with something totally overdone
or bizarre, rather than play it safe and be boringly correct.
But your teacher might have different preferences.
Ask.
OK, so we've talked about these eight kinds of figurative language:
metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole,
understatement, idioms, analogy, and irony.
There are more kinds, like synecdoche and apostrophe,
but these are the main ones, I think. Here's a time index
in case you need to re-watch something.
Quiz time!
So, what kind of figurative language is being used in these examples?
10 questions.
1. "You are the dew on the morning grass and the burning wheel of the sun."
Hm? What kind of figurative language is that?
Notice: "you ARE the dew on the morning grass." OK, no more hints.
2. "A hot wind was blowing around my head,
the strands of my hair lifting and swirling in it, like ink spilled in water."
3. Here's Tupac writing about a person who overcame hard times:
"Long live the rose that grew from the concrete
When no one else even cared!"
4. "The roof might fly off, the walls might buckle from the pressure of his rage."
That's a man talking about his drunk, angry father, by the way,
not a person with superpowers.
5. Romeo questions his mortally wounded friend:
"What art thou hurt?" His friend knows he's
going to die from this wound, but he says, "Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch."
6. Here the poet is talking about a field of flowers:
"Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."
7. "If you want my final opinion on the mystery
of life and all that, I can give it to you in a nutshell. The universe
is like a safe to which there is a combination.
But the combination is locked up in the safe."
8. "I can resist everything -- except temptation."
9. "I heard it through the grapevine."
10. Russians (are) returning to NHS after souring
on KHL (Kontinental Hockey League)
Figurative language adds subtle shades of meaning to your words,
and brings out your personality in your writing
so you don't sound like a robot from a 1960s B-movie.
Figurative language brings your writing to life.
Figurative language jumps off the page, grabs your reader
by the lapels, and wakes him up.
And here are what I think are the correct answers to the quiz:
So that's figurative language. Go have some fun with it!