Great! You finished answering the questions.
You may request your facilitator to
check your work. Congratulations and keep on learning!
Diction refers to the selection of words in a literary work. A work’s diction forms
one of its centrally important literary elements as writers use words to convey
action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. It
includes the formality of the language, the emotional content, the imagery, the
specificity, and the sounds of the words.
Example:
“I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that East doth hold.”
- Anne Bradstreet, “To My Dear and Loving Husband”
• The use of antiquated words such as “thy” instead of “your” and “doth”
instead of “do” gives the poem a formal diction.
• These antiquated words are considered grand, elevated, and sophisticated
language.
FIGURES OF SPEECH
Figures of speech are words or phrases used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or
vivid effect.
The most common figures of speech are simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia,
personification, apostrophe, hyperbole, synecdoche, metonymy,
oxymoron, and paradox.
1. Simile – a stated comparison (formed with “like” or “as” between two
fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.
Example: “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” – Langston Hughes,
“Harlem”
2. Metaphor – an implied comparison between two unlike things that have
something in common.
Example: “Hope is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –”
- Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”
3
3. Onomatopoeia – uses words that imitate sounds associated with objects or
actions.
Example: “The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by whack.”
- James Joyce, “Ulysses”
4. Personification – endows human qualities or abilities to inanimate objects or
abstraction.
Example: “Ah, William, we’re wary of the weather,” said the sunflowers
shining with dew. – William Blake, “Two Sunflowers Move in the Yellow Room”
5. Apostrophe – is addressing an absent person or thing that is an abstract,
inanimate, or inexistent character.
Example: “Death be not proud, though some have called thee.”
- John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”
6. Hyperbole – a figure of speech which contains an exaggeration for emphasis.
Example: “To make enough noise to wake the dead.”
– R. Davies, “What’s Bred in the Bone”
7. Synecdoche – a figure of speech in which the part stands for the whole, and
thus something else is understood within the thing mentioned.
Example: “Give us this day out daily bread”
*Bread stands for the meals taken each day.
8. Metonymy – a figure of speech in which the name of an attribute or a thing is
substituted for the thing itself.
Example: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”
– William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”
*Lend me your ears = to pay attention; to listen
9. Oxymoron – a figure of speech which combines incongruous and apparently
contradictory words and meanings for a special effect.
Example: “Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything! of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!”
- William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet”
10. Paradox – a statement which seems on its face to be logically contradictory
or absurd yet turns out to be interpretable in a way that makes sense.
Example: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”
- John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”
