12 Personification Periphrasis

Personification = attributing human qualities & emotions to an inanimate object or natural phenomenon. Sometimes P. can go hand in hand with other devices, e.g. with a simile. “The Ballad of the Reading Gaol” abounds in cases of P.: the hands of Lust, the yellow face of Doom, black Despair, red Hell, Human Pity, forms of Fear, Remorse, Terror, Justice, Fate. Graphically P. is often accompanied by capitalizing the name of the object personified. Grammatically it often manifests itself in the usage s/he instead of it. E.g.: a smiling moon. In "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath the mirror--the "I" in the first line--is given the ability to speak, see and swallow, human qualities are attributed to it (truthful, having no preconception). In John Keats' "To Autumn," the fall season is personified as "sitting careless on a granary floor". Wind yells while blowing, necklace is a friend, the window winked at me. The video camera observed the whole scene. The strawberries seemed to sing, "Eat me first!” The daffodils nodded their yellow heads at the walkers. The snow whispered as it fell to the ground during the early morning hours. The china danced on the shelves during the earthquake. The car engine coughed and sputtered when it started during the blizzard.

PERIPHRASIS.

Periphrasis is a device which denotes the use of a longer descriptive phrasing in place of a possible shorter and plainer form of expression. It is also called circumlocution due to the round-about or indirect way used to name a familiar object or phenomenon.

As a stylistic device, periphrasis aims at pointing to one of the seemingly insignif­icant or barely noticeable features or properties of the given object, and intensifies this property by naming the object by the property.

The essence of the device is that it is decipherable only in context. If a periphrastic locution is understandable outside the context, it is not a stylistic device but merely a synonymous expression. Such easily decipherable periphrases are also called traditi­onal, dictionary or language periphrases. Here are some examples of well-known dictionary periphrases (peri­phrastic synonyms):

white collar (= office worker, based on metonymy); the fair sex (women); my better half (my wife).

Genuine P.: "The big man upstairs hears your prayers." (= God)

“a battle btw reason & blind desire to own someone” (= jealousy)

Often P. is used for humorous purposes (e.g. by Dickens: “To ladies and gentlemen who are not in the habit of devoting themselves practically to the science of penmanship, writing a letter is no very easy task…” – Pickwick Papers)

EUPHEMISM:

= a word or phrase used to replace an unpleasant word or expression by a conventionally more acceptable one; synonyms which aim at producing a deliberately mild effect.

Euphemisms may be divided into several groups according to their spheres of application. Acc. to Galperin, the most recognized are the following: 1) religi­ous (for hell, damnation, and the devil: “what the dickens, what the heck”, “darn it”; for God: by George!, by Jove!), 2) moral (sex – do it, come together, death – to go west), 3) medical (grave diseases, physiol. phenomena) and 4) parliamentary (= polit. correctness).

Class-tions by Katsev: conceptual aspect: supernatural forces; death (to join the majority), diseases & disabilities (mentally challenged; neoplasmia or big C for “cancer”); sins & crimes; poverty (underprivileged); physiol. phenomena (to go to the bathroom)

structural & semantic aspects: generalization (“the situation” for pregnancy, “going to the other side” for death); metaphorical & metonymical renaming (“to kick the bucket” = to die - metaph.; “adult entertainment” for pornography – meton.); negative prefixes (underprivileged); shortening (SOB for “son of a bitch”, BS for “bullshit”), sound-based analogy (shoot for shit); borrowings (derrière for “buttocks”)

Poetic periphrasis consists in using a lengthy and flowery\high-flown expression instead of a plainer and shorter one. The purpose is often humorous or ironic.