5.Figures of speech. Metaphor. Kinds of metaphor. Types of similarity.

In literature and writing, a figure of speech (also called stylistic device or rhetorical device) is the use of any of a variety of techniques to give an auxiliary meaning, idea, or feeling.

Sometimes a word diverges from its normal meaning, or a phrase has a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it. Examples are metaphor, simile, or personification.

Stylistic devices often provide emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity.

Here is a list of some of the most important figures of speech:

----allusion: Indirect reference to another work of literature or art

----ambiguity: Phrasing which can have two meanings

----analogy A comparision

----humour: Provoking laughter and providing amusement

----hyperbole: Use of exaggerated terms for emphasis

----meiosis: Use of understatement, usually to diminish the importance of something

----metaphor: Stating one entity is another for the purpose of comparing them in quality

----metonymy: Substitution of an associated word to suggest what is really meant

----neologism: The use of a word or term that has recently been created, or has been in use for a short time. Opposite of archaism

----onomatopoeia: Words that sound like their meaning

----oxymoron: Using two terms together, that normally contradict each other

----simile: Comparison between two things using like or as (He fights like a lion).

----zeugma: The use of a word in both its figurative and literal sense

Metaphor is the most common of the figures of speech.

Unlike simile, metaphor (from the Greek language: meaning "transfer") is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is a figure of speech that compares two or more things not using like or as. In the simplest case, this takes the form:

All the world's a stage,  And all the men and women merely players;  They have their exits and their entrances;

Kinds of metaphor:

---a conceit is a metaphor (or a simile) in which the distance between tenor and vehicle is great 

E.g. “my skin bright as a Nazi lampshade” (Sylvia Plath). Here, we have simile rather than metaphor, but the distance between tenor and vehicle makes the image surpising.  ---explicit metaphor (“teljes”): both tenor and vehicle are there; 

---implied metaphor (“csonka”): either tenor or vehicle is missing and has to be suplied by the reader. Such metaphors are like puzzles or rebuses: we are invited by a surprising statement to guess as to the ground of the Transposition /identification. 

E.g. “The roses kept breathing in the dark”. The tenor is there (roses), but the vehicle is missing and we have to supply it. In the most successful metaphors, the ground is usually complecx, not simply a single common feature: this is why many metaphors have more than one “correct” solutions. 

nominal metaphor (“névszói”): this is the most frequent type, the “A” = “B” type, idnetification is made between two nouns (“your skin is velvet”) verbal metaphor (“igei”): usually implied metaphor; the identification is not explicitly stated but indicated by a verb. e.g. “my heart is flying” = the full, explicit form of the metaphor is “my heart is a bird”

a dead metaphor: a metaphor that has lost its force and surprise effect, that has ceased to behave as a trope (e.g. “foot of the hill”); the word “metaphor” is itself a dead metaphor, for it originally means to carry sg. over in a physical sense 

Metaphors, H. Paul points out, may be based upon very different types of similarity, for instance, the similarity of shape: head of a cabbage, the teeth of a saw. This similarity of shape may be supported by a similarity of function. The transferred meaning is easily recognised from the context: The Head of the school, the key to a mystery. The similarity may be supported also by position: foot of a page/of a mountain, or behaviour and function: bookworm, wirepuller.