Examining Figures of Speech
http://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-profiles/publicola/articles/publicalendar-november-13-2013
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7bGilrAQ5
• John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th President of the
United States
• At age 43, he was the youngest to have been elected to the
office, the second-youngest president, and the first person born
in the 20th century to serve as president.
• The only Roman Catholic president and the only president to
have won a Pulitzer Prize.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C3gqIR8RoI
• John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President at noon on
January 20, 1961.
• He won the election by one of the smallest popular vote
margins in history.
• Kennedy’s goals: (1)to inspire the nation (2) alert the world of
challenges of the Cold War, and (3) promote hope for peace in
the nuclear age.
• He also wanted to be brief (power and poetry)
• He studied other inaugural speeches and Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address
• The finely-crafted final speech had been revised and
reworked numerous
• 1,355 words in length, comprised of short phrases and words
• captivated his audience required a powerful delivery.
• Following his inaugural address, nearly seventy-five percent of
Americans expressed approval of President Kennedy.
A.
B.
C.
D.
Figures of Speech
Master of rhetoric
persuasive
Good looking
•
•
•
•
Graces of language
The dressing of thought
Embellishment
Figures of Speech do decorate prose, but that is not there sole
function
• According to Aristotle:
• They give clearness and liveliness to our expressions
• They balance our writing between “the obvious and the
obscure”
• They help our audience grasp our ideas promptly
• According to Longinus:
• They “infuse vehemence and passion into our spoken words”
• “…when combined with argumentative passages it…persuades
the hearer…”
•
•
•
•
Figures of Speech render out thoughts in a vivid, concrete way.
They stir up emotional responses
Deliver a message clearly and effectively
Allows a writer or speaker’s eloquence exert powerful ethical
appeal f
• “a form of speech artfully varied from common usage”—
Quintilian
• Because language has
figurative resources
• Schemes- deviation from the ordinary pattern or arrangement
of words
• Tropes- deviation from the ordinary and principal signification
of a word
•
•
•
•
•
•
Both involve a change in meaning to a degree
Both involve transference
Trope transfers meaning
Example irony
Scheme transfers order of meaning
Example Hyperbaton
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Alliteration
Anaphora
Anastrophe
Antithesis
Assonance
Consonance
Metaphor
Simile
Parallelism
Paradox
Repetition
• Alliteration: repetition of the same sound beginning several
words in a sequence
• Example:
• Alie angrily ate apples and acorns.
• Anaphora: repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of
successive phrases, clauses or lines.
• Example:
• Tracy didn’t scream. Tracy didn’t cry. Tracy didn’t say a word—until she
saw the blood.
• Anastrophe: transposition of normal word order
• Example:
• “Good, it is,” Yoda squealed while swinging his light saber, “the force to
know. Geoge Lucus, your father is. ”
http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles-7/yoda-runs-the-gauntlet-1517214/
• Antithesis: contrast of ideas or words in a parallel structure
• Example
• He’s easy on the heart, but hard on the eyes.
• Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words
• Example
• "I lie down by the side of my bride"
• "Fleet feet sweep by sleeping geese"
• "Hear the lark and harden to the barking of the dark fox gone to ground"
by Pink Floyd
http://mosttalentedartists.blogspot.com/2012_
12_01_archive.html
• Consonance: repetition of consonant sounds within words or
ending words
• Example
• I'll swing by my ankles.
She'll cling to your knees.
As you hang by your nose,
From a high-up trapeze.
But just one thing, please,
As we float through the breeze,
Don't sneeze.
- The Acrobats by Shel Silverstein
• Metaphor: implied comparison through a figurative, not literal,
use of words
• Example
• Life is a highway, and I just got my driver’s license.
• Simile- an explicit comparison between two unlike things, yet
they have something in common.
• Example
• I sat still, like jelly in a jar.
• Paradox: a statement that seems self-contradictory, yet turns out
to have a rational meaning
• Example
• Mitch is a one-man army.
• Repetition: a word or phrase used two or more times in close
proximity
• Example
• “A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mister Ed.”
• theme song of Mr. Ed, a 1960s TV program.