Skill Spotlight: Figurative Language

Skill Spotlight: Figurative Language

Defined

Whenever you describe something by comparing it to something else, you are using figurative language. This is language writers use to produce images in readers’ minds and to express ideas in fresh, vivid, imaginative ways. To create figurative language writers use figures of speech. These are words and phrases whose connotations go beyond their literal meanings.
 
When writers use literal language, they are stating facts as they are. Figurative language, by contrast, often uses comparison or exaggeration to make a point, and to help readers imagine something in an unexpected way. For example, in the sentence, The dancer glided like a swan, the writer uses a figure of speech (“glided like a swan”) to produce an image that tells more about the dancer’s movement than the literal sentence, The dancer danced. Figurative language is very common in poetry, though it is also used in prose (both fiction and nonfiction). It can help you understand or imagine something in a way you would not otherwise.
Identification and Application:

• Figurative language comes in many forms, including:
  • Similes, which compare unlike things using “like” or “as”: his hair is like a bird’s nest
  • Metaphors, which compare unlike things directly, without “like” or “as”: his hair is a bird’s nest
  • Figures of speech, such as idioms: early bird
  • Personification, or giving human qualities to something that is not human, such as birds gossiping in the trees