Helping English

Rhetorical  Devices/Literary Devices (Figures of Speech)

Rhetorical devices (simile, metaphor, personification, allusion, etc) are used for style as they decorate the spoken and written language. They also reveal the speaker’s/writer’s attitude towards the subject. E.g “A host, of golden daffodils;/Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

In the example the speaker has used a personification (dancing) for daffodils to express his love for the flowers and in general for nature.

Rhetorical devices are also used to persuade, to inform, and to express personal thoughts, or to entertain the reader.

Simile:

The writers use simile to compare two things that are somewhat related. Read the following examples.

“Your words slice my heart as diamonds cut glass.” We know that words cut (hurt) and so do the diamonds.   

“The sea waves strike against the shore like furious horses galloping on a battlefield.”      

Metaphor: The metaphor like the simile compares something to another. The only difference is that a simile compares something to another thing by pointing out the similarity using the words ‘as’, ‘like’. A metaphor speaks of one thing as though it actually were another.

e.g Dr. “King was truly a king among men.” Metaphor

       “Dr. King was like a king among men.” Simile

Examples: “The child had the smile of an angel.”

                     “The sun rose in the back of his head.”

Personification:

Personification is the act of giving human qualities e.g eat, think, smile, walk, weep, dance to something that is non-human. It might be an animal, an inanimate object, or an abstract idea. “The wind howls and growls.” “…Beauty’s glance,/And watch her feet, how they can dance.”

 Imagery: visually descriptive or figurative language, imagery invokes any of the five senses -hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, smelling- to create a set of mental images. E.g. A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. This excerpt is like a camera image and one can imagine the beauty of the place with the help of words such as golden, beneath, besides, fluttering and dancing.

Examples:

visual  - huge trees in the thick and dark forest

auditory – the rustling of leaves

smell – scent of apples

taste – sweet and juicy oranges

touch – rugged and rough path

Alliteration: the repetition of usually consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables such as wild and wolly, dancing daffodils,

Examples:

1. “five miles in meandering motion” [m]
2. Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers. [p]
3. Sally sells seashells by the seashore. [s]

Rhyme: the technique of using words that have he same sound as each other especially at the end of lines. E.g “I wandered lonely as a cloud/ when all at once I saw a crowd. Both cloud and crowd are rhyming words.

Rhyme Scheme: Rhyme schemes are described using alphabets (ABCD ..)

Example: 

    I wandered lonely as a cloud   A

    That floats on high o’er vales and hills   B

    When all at once I saw a crowd  A

    A host, of golden daffodils;   B

    Beside the lake, beneath the trees,  C

    Fluttering and dancing in the breeze  C

The rhyme scheme of the above stanza is ABABCC

Note: every two end rhyming words will have the same label. E.g cloud (L1) and crowd (L2) will be labeled A