Figures of Quality

Figures of quality
Made by:
Liubov Vakoliuk
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FIGURES OF QUALITY
a) metonymy(synecdoche, periphrasisi,
euphemism);
b) Metaphor (antonomasia, personification,
allegory, epithet);
c) irony.
 allegory
allusion
 personification
 antonomasia
 metaphor
Irony Epithet
Metonymical
group
Metaphorical
group
 metonymy
 synecdoche
 periphrasis
 euphemism
Metonymy
Metonymy (Gk ‘name change’) is a trope in
which a name of a thing is replaced by the name
of an associated thing.
• the White House = the President or the whole
executive branch
• the pen is mightier than the sword = written
words are more powerful than military force
The types of relation which
metonymy is based on:
1) characteristic features of the object
instead the object itself;
That night the Board of Aldermen met – three
greybeards and one younger man, a member of
the rising generation (W. Faulkner);
2) the relation of proximity
The round game table was boisterous and
happy. (Dickens)
3) the material instead of the thing made of it
• “Evelyn Clasgow, get up out of that chair this minute. /…/
Your satin. The skirt’ll be a mess of wrinkles in the back.”
(Ferber)
• He examined her bronzes and clays.
4) a concrete thing used instead of an abstract notion,
becoming its symbol
• I crossed a high tall bridge and negotiated a no man’s land
and came to the place where the Stars and Stripes stood
shoulder to shoulder with the Union Jack.
(Steinbeck)
• It was a representative gathering – science, pounds, business.
5) names of tools instead of actions
As the sword is the worst argument that can be
used, so should it be the last. (Byron)
6) an article of clothing and the person wearing it
Black shirt said, “Does Mr Gran than live in that
house?” (J. Chase)
7) an instrument and the action it performs
[...] my early determination [...], to make the pen
my instrument, and not my idol (B.Shaw).
Synecdoche
Synecdoche (Gk ‘taking up together’) is a
variety of metonymy in which the part stands for
the whole, or the genus – the species, and vice
versa.
Metaphorical group
Personification
Allegory Allusion
Metaphorical
group
Antonomasia
Metaphor
Metaphor
Metaphor (Gk ‘carrying from one place to
another’) denotes expressive renaming based on
likeness, similarity or affinity (real or imaginary)
of some features of two different objects.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
(W. Shakespeare, As You Like It)
The structure of metaphor
R. Richards (The Philosophy of Rhetoric) (1936)
Tenor Vehicle
The tenor is the subject The vehicle is the

to which attributes are subject from which the
ascribed. attributes are borrowed.
40 - LOVE
Middle aged couple
playing tennis
when the game ends
and they go home
the net will still be
between them.
(McGough 1971)
A HUMAN RELATIONSHIP IS A GAME OF SPORT
Types of metaphorical transfer:
1. the transfer of the name of one object to another:
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player…
(Shakespeare)
2. the transfer of the mode of action:
• We talked and talked and talked, easily, sympathetically,
wedding her experience with my articulation. (John
Barth)
• Leaving Daniel to his fate, she was conscious of joy springing
in her heart. (Bennett)
3. the transfer of the typical characteristics:
The fog comes on little cat feet. (Sandburg)
•
According to its structure, metaphor
may be:
a) simple or elementary, which is based on
the actualization of one or several features
common for two objects ;
b) prolonged or sustained, which is
extended over several lines in a passage or
throughout an entire passage.
All the world’s a stage,
And all men and women are merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts
His acts being seven ages… (Shakespeare)
The main function of metaphor is aesthetic. It
appeals to the reader’s imagination.
Epithet
Epithet is an attributive word, phrase or even
sentence employed to characterise an object by
giving it subjective evaluation.
Epithet characterizes the object,
phenomenon, event or action pointing out some
of its peculiar properties or features. It is
subjective, emotive and evaluative.
 adjectives and adverbs: his triumphant look, he
looked triumphantly;
 Participle I and Participle II: the frightened moment,

a waiting silence ,
 nouns: a lemon moon, a sausage finger
 exclamatory sentences “You, ostrich!”
 postpositive attributes “Richard of the Lion Heart

epithet = logical attribute
Logical attribute is purely objective, not

coloured emotionally and non-evaluative.
It emphasises an inherent, objective feature of

the object in question ‘green leaves’, ‘blue eyes’,
‘dark hair’.
V.A. Kukharenko differentiates between :
 affective (or emotive proper) epithets, used to
convey the emotional evaluation of the object by
the speaker;
 figurative (or transferred) epithets, formed

on metaphors, metonymies and similes expressed
by adjectives: the smiling sun, the tobacco-
stained smile, a ghost-like face .
I.R. Galperin distinguishes:
associated epithets, employed to point to a
feature which is to a certain extent inherent in
the concept of the object: dark forest, dreary
midnight, fantastic terrors;
 unassociated epithets, used to characterize the
object by adding a new striking feature:
heartburning smile, bootless cries, sullen
earth.
Structurally epithets are subdivided
according to their compositional and
distributional peculiarities.
Compositional types of epithets:
simple : cruel thunder, raven hair, clamouring atmosphere,
yelling face;
compound: gentle-eyed man, wonder-happy little boy, care-free
eyes, handkerchief-big space;
phrase: going-to-bed sounds, go-it-alone attitude;
sentence: “You are right”, said Val suddenly; “but things aren’t
what they were when I was your age. There’s a ‘To-morrow we
die’ feeling. That’s what old George meant about my uncle
Soames (J. Galsworthy); never-know-where-you-will-be-
tomorrow world;
inverted (reversed) (of-phrase): She was a faded white rabbit of
a woman (A. Christi).
From the point of view of distribution of
epithets in the sentence there distinguish:
 single epithets: accusing finger, sorrowful bush,
smiling admiration;
 string of epithets: I grant him bloody, luxurious,
avaricious, false, deceitful, sudden, malicious,
smacking of all sin that has name; but there’s no
bottom, none, in my voluptuousness. Your wives, your
matrons, your maids, could fill the cistern of my lust
… Better Macbeth than such as one to reign
(W.Shakespeare).
Irony
In a narrow sense, irony is the use of a word having a
positive meaning to express a negative one.
 In a wider sense, irony is an utterance which
formally shows a positive or neutral attitude of the
speaker to the object of conversation but in fact
expresses a negative evaluation of it.
Several promising young writers of sixty stroll over,
listen and stroll away again taking their great thoughts
with them.
Intonation plays an important role in expressing
irony. Irony is generally used to convey a negative
meaning but only positive concepts may be used in it.
Thank You for your attention!

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Figures of quality

R. Richards (The Philosophy of Rhetoric) (1936)

The tenor is the subject The vehicle is the

 Participle I and Participle II: the frightened moment,

 nouns: a lemon moon, a sausage finger

 exclamatory sentences “You, ostrich!”

 postpositive attributes “Richard of the Lion Heart

Logical attribute is purely objective, not

It emphasises an inherent, objective feature of

 figurative (or transferred) epithets, formed

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