A figure of speech, sometimes termed a rhetorical figure or device, or elocution, is a word or phrase that departs from straightforward, literal language. Figures of speech are often used and crafted for emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity. However, clarity may also suffer from their use.
Note that not all theories of meaning necessarily have a concept of "literal language" (see Literal and figurative language). Under theories that do not, figure of speech is not an entirely coherent concept.
As an example of the figurative use of a word, consider the sentence, I am going to crown you. It may mean:
I am going to place a literal crown on your head.
I am going to symbolically exalt you to the place of kingship.
I am going to knock you in the head.
Figures of speech have been classified into a number of different categories. Most figures originated out of centuries of philologicalcommentary on ancient texts, and so most are named from Greek or Latin, as they originally were meant to classify grammatical peculiarities of those languages.
More formally, a rhetoricalfigure occurs when an expression deviates from expectation, the expression is not rejected as nonsensical or faulty, the deviation occurs at the level of form rather than content, and the deviation conforms to a template that is invariant across a variety of content and contexts.
By contrast, a rhetorical question or pun is not a sensorially apparent feature of the headline, but becomes manifest as the text is related to semantic and background knowledge (see Childers and Houston 1984 for an experimental instantiation of a depth of processing manipulation based on this sensory vs. semantic distinction).
Figure 2 provides two examples: the ad for California almonds makes use of visual antithesis (a scheme) in its presentation of a "sad" and "happy" croissant, while the Dramamine ad can be thought of as a visual metaphor (a trope) that brings the idea of seatbelt protection and nausea protection into unexpected juxtaposition.
A trope is a rhetoricalfigure of speech that consists of a play on words, i.e.
A figure of speech, sometimes termed a rhetoricalfigure or device, or elocution, is a word or phrase that departs from straightforward, literal language.
Synecdoche (pronounced sin-EK-duh-kee, IPA:) is a figure of speech that presents a kind of metaphor in which: A part of something is used for the whole, The whole is used for a part, The species is used for the genus, The genus is used for the species...
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