FIGURES OF SPEECH (AND RELATED TERMS)
This list is mainly based on definitions proposed by F. Grellet in A Handbook of Literary Terms
(1996). Please refer to this or other such handbooks for additional terms and explanations.
I. WORDS
To describe words, their associations and interactions, the following terms may be useful:
• Content words / full words / lexical words = words that carry referential meaning (verbs,
nouns, adjectives).
• ≠ Function words / empty words / grammatical words = words that play a specific
grammatical function in the sentence (ex: prepositions, conjunctions, articles).
• Rk : grammatical words deserve full scrutiny, as their role can be as important as with lexical
terms.
• Denotation (v. to denote) = the basic, literal, referential meaning of a word.
• Connotation (v. to connote) = the more subjective, personal or contextual associations related
to words
Ex: blood denotes the circulation of fluid in the body, but it can connote life, war, violence,
etc.
• Polysemy (adj. polysemous) = when words have several meanings
Ex: The noun “flight” is polysemous as it means both “vol” et “fuite”.
• Synonyms (adj. synonymous with) = different words that carry the same meaning. One may
talk of a near-synonym when the meaning is close but slightly different.
• ≠ Antonyms = words that have opposite meanings
• Isotopy = the meaning created by a network of related terms belonging to the same semantic
field.
Ex: The isotopy of motherhood can be identified through words like “womb,” “birth,”
“infant,” “nurture”
• Collocation = words that are usually used together, out of idiomatic usage.
Ex: “to have a dream” is the right collocation in English (and not to make a dream)
• Coinage / Neologism (v. to coin a word) = an invented word
Ex: “uberization” is a recent neologism
• Catachresis = a general term which designates the erroneous use of words.
• Malapropism = the misuse of a word, used instead of another. The word comes from Mrs.
Malaprop, a comic character in Sheridan’s play The Rivals.
Ex: “He’s the very pineapple of politeness” (instead of “pinnacle” = sommet) (Sheridan)
• Barbarism / Solecism = a type of catachresis, a mistake in the form or usage of a word
Ex: Magnifical instead of magnificent
• Pun / wordplay / play on words usually rely on:
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o Homonymy = similar words with different meanings.
Ex: a bat (animal / baseball bat)
o Equivoque = when a word, with different possible meanings, is used in an
ambiguous, undecidable way.
Ex: I live by the church (close to / according to the principles of)
o Homophony = words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings.
Ex: Rite/right
o Paronomasia = words sharing close sounds and/or spellings.
Ex: “The same odd sun” (which sounds close to “the same old sun”) (Bishop)
o Antanaclasis = repetition of a word but with two different meanings in each case.
Ex: My heart is still (quiet), I love you still.
II. IMAGERY
Imagery is an umbrella term that designates the various objects, items, pictures alluded to or
described in a work, and the ways they are used to convey a literal meaning and/or a figurative one,
and to create concrete or abstract associations. They may include:
• Comparison / simile: an explicit parallel between two elements, the tenor (le comparé, the
element that is compared) and the vehicle (le comparant, the figurative element), usually
articulated by “like,” “as,” or other similar terms.
Ex: Your eyes are shining like the stars in sky.
• Metaphor: an implied parallel between two elements
Ex: The city is a real jungle.
• Symbol: an analogy between a concrete and an abstract or usually within the frame of a
shared culture. A related term is allegory, which often implies a human being or sometimes
animal.
Ex: The heart is a symbol of love. The Statue of Liberty is an allegory of freedom.
• Conceit: a far-fetched metaphor that brings together very different elements whose
resemblance is not instinctively visible.
Ex: Two lovers being compared to the two branches of a compass in John Donne.
• Metonymy: the replacement of a term by another, closely related to it. Metonymies often
involve a link between:
o contained/container (ex: the head (for the mind))
o work/author (ex: a Picasso (for a painting by Picasso))
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o object/material (ex: denims (for trousers made of denim))
o person/attribute (ex: the Crown (for the kind/queen))
o part/whole or whole/part (ex: hands (for workers) or France (for the French team in
soccer for ex.))
→ These last two cases are a specific type of metonymy known as synecdoche.
• Antonomasia = a kind of metonymy in which a proper name is replaced by noun phrase or
adjective designating an attribute of the person, place, etc. It can also apply when a proper
name replaces a common concept.
Ex: The bard (= to talk about Shakespeare). The place is an Eldorado (= to designate a land
of opportunity)
• Personification (to personify): when an inanimate element is given human attributes.
Ex: Zephyr as a personification of the wind.
• Pathetic fallacy (Ruskin) designates the projection of human emotions, qualities, or features
onto an inanimate object, but in a looser way than personification.
Ex: The raining clouds expressing sadness
• Objective correlative (Eliot) is a related concept defined by T.S. Eliot as “a set of objects, a
situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion”
• Prosopopoeia is the fact of making a silent element (object, monument, ghost) speak.
An image-motif (sometimes simply motif) is a network of related images in a text. One may speak of
a structuring/extended/running metaphor. A leitmotif designates a recurring image or motif. An
archetype is a recurring image or pattern of images in a given culture.
When an image has become so common as to sound unoriginal, one may speak of a cliché, a topos, a
dead/stale metaphor. (Ex: winter as the metaphor of old age)
The effects of imagery can be varied, but they may contribute to a process of foregrounding (putting
something into relief), and even defamiliarization (showing common things in a new light).
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III. SENTENCE AND PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE
Sentences can be simple (1 clause), compound (2 or more co-ordinated main clauses), or complex (a
main clause and two or more subordinate clauses). The way they are constructed and articulated can
contribute to the following effects:
• Parataxis (adj. paratactic) = the links between sentences or clauses is minimal, usually
achieved through mere juxtaposition. The paragraph often look loosely organized, sometimes
creating an effect of dryness or speed (among others).
Ex: She was having breakfast. The phone rang. She ran over to it. Her coffee fell to the floor.
• Hypotaxis (adj. hypotactic) = the links between sentences and clauses is tight and
hierarchical, usually achieved through subordination. The paragraphs look denser and more
complex.
Ex: When the phone rang, while she was having breakfast, she ran over to it, causing her
coffee to fall to the floor.
• A periodic sentence = the grammatical completion of the sentence is delayed and only
achieved at the end.
Ex: Only when governments start to work together and take radical measures, will humanity
be able to fight climate change.
• A loose or nonperiodic sentence = a sentence that is grammatically complete before the end.
Ex: Only governmental decisions can make a real impact on climate change, which has now
become urgent.
→ The focus of the sentence is therefore different in both case.
• Anacoluthon = when a sentence begins with one construction and ends with another. It
therefore implies a syntactical break.
Ex: Who is it knocking at the door, which is why I never answer.
• Ellipsis = the elision of a group of words.
Ex: They kissed and then…
Repetition and amplification devices may include:
• Anaphora (or epanaphora) = the repetition of a word or group of words at the beginning of
successive sentences.
Ex: “So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring
from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania, […]” (Martin Luther King)
• Epiphora (or epistrophe) = the repetition of a word or group of words at the end of
successive sentences.
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Ex: “If you had known the virtue of the ring, / Or half her worthiness that gave the ring, / Or
your own honor to contain the ring, / You would not then have parted with the ring.”
(Shakespeare)
• Anadiplosis = the repetition of a word at the end of a sentence and at the beginning of the
next.
Ex: “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." (Master Yoda)
• Symploce = the combination of anaphora and epiphora.
Ex: "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes" (Eliot)
• Chiasmus = the repetition of two pairs of identical or closely related words at both ends of a
clause, sentence of paragraph, so that they form a frame-like structure : AB…BA
Ex: A wise man said “never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you.”
• Antimetabole = when the chiasmus occurs affects the structure of the whole sentence.
Ex: “You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
• Polyptoton = the repetition of words sharing the same root.
Ex: “I have done the deed” (Shakespeare)
• Polysyndeton = the repetition of words in a series with conjunctions between them.
Ex: “By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived—no thin five-piece affair but a whole pitful of
oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high
drums.” (Fitzgerald)
• Asyndeton = the repetition of words in a series without the conjunctions that should normally
link them.
Ex: They drank, they danced, they laughed.
• Anastrophe = a change in the usual word order, for poetic, rhetorical or other reasons.
Ex: Never again shall I see my home country.
• Hypallage = when an adjective is attributed to a noun different from the one expected in the
first place
Ex: The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is
playing yellow cocktail music. (Fitzgerald) [the epithet “yellow” applies to the music instead
of the lights here].
The device is sometimes associated to an effect of synaesthesia, when all the senses are
blended through different associations [see ex. above, in which we hear the music as if it were
a color that we were looking at].
Punctuation signs include:
. full stop (GB) / period (US)
, comma
; semicolon
: colon
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- hyphen (in compound words)
— dash
… dots / ellipsis
() brackets (GB) / parentheses (US)
[ ] square brackets
“ ” quotation marks / inverted commas (GB)
? question mark
! exclamation mark
’ apostrophe
* asterisk
/ slash / stroke
