英语修辞定义
食品科学与工程就业前景-肖像描写片段
Logical Figures of Speech
“寓言”与“汉语”
“汉语”“寓言”的词源来源于《庄子》。《庄子·寓言》：“寓言十九，藉外论之。”郭象的注解“
十九”
说：“十言而九见信。”可见，庄子认为寓言的特点是假借另外的事物以说明道理，寓言说理的成
功率非
常大。可惜，庄子没有强调寓言的故事性，以致古人把寓言理解得过于宽泛，甚至把寓言等同于一
般的比
喻或者抒发理想的作品。在先秦诸子百家的著作中，有许多当时流行的优秀寓言，如：《亡鈇》、
《攘鸡》、《宋
人揠苗》、《矛盾》、《郑人买履》、《守株待兔》、《刻舟求剑》、《画蛇添足》等。
“寓言”与“西文”
西方寓言主要有四大类型：1、fable型：以伊索寓言为代表，大多
是拟人化的动物故事。如：<狼和小羊>。
fable这个词有寓言、童话、神话的含义。2、Para
ble型:以《圣经》寓言为代表,大多是人物故事,富有宗教
色彩。如:《浪子回头》。Parabl
e这个 词就有寓言、比喻的含义。3、Allegory型：一种长篇大的双重结构
的文体，如班扬的
小说《天路历程》，斯宾塞的长诗《仙女王》。4、Morality
Play型。这四个类型概括起来
可称为Allegoric tales.
I. ALLEGORY: The word allegoryis from the
Greek word allegoriawhich means
otherwise
Allegory is a story in verse or prose with a
double meaning: a primary or surface meaning, and
a
secondary or under-the-surface meaning.
Since it represents one thing in the guise of
another, i. e., an
abstraction in that of a
concrete image, it can be read, understood and
interpreted at two levels -- the
literal level
and the political, ethical or religious level.
Allegories are effective in teaching or
explaining some abstract idea. They are favorably
used in moral
teaching.
It is a figurative
representation of some abstract truth by the use
of symbolic language.
In allegories, names of
the characters and places are often symbols of
certain qualities. In Banyan's
Pilgrim's
Progress, the names of the characters are
ChristianMr. Blind-manMr. No-goodthe
names of
places like City of Despond, Vanity FairCelestial
City
underlying sense in these proper names.
Allegory is closely related to the fable and
the parable. Allegory, fable and parable are all
figurative ways
of telling stories about
fictional characters and events with the purpose
of teaching or illustrating a moral
principle.
They all suggest the truth without stating it
directly. But there are differences between them.
An
allegory may be long and elaborate, with
many characters and incidents. A fable usually
states the moral
at the end. The story is told
in terms of animals that speak and reflect the
nature of human beings. A
parable is brief. It
typically shows the application of a moral precept
to a familiar situation.
Allegory is a total
interpretation of different symbols in the story.
A naive reader often takes an allegory at
its
face value as a narrative. In fact, an allegory,
which involves both literal and figurative
readings, should
be understood in a figurative
way. In this sense, allegory can be considered as
a metaphor. As allegory
partakes of the
ambivalence and indeterminacy, allegory is more
difficult for the reader to understand
than
metaphor is.
Allusion
1、暗指，间接提到;
2、引用典故，典故 ,引喻
(1)The act of alluding; indirect
reference:
影射；暗指：暗指的行为；间接提及：
Without naming names, the candidate criticized the
national leaders by
allusion.没有指出姓名，候选人
间接批评了国家领袖
(2)An
instance of indirect reference: 典故；引用：间接提及的例子：
an allusion to classical mythology in a
Usage Note at allude 诗中的经典神话典故
Allusion
derives from the Latin word playing
with
implicit reference to a famous historical
or literary figure or a well-known historical
event, which the writer
assumes to be familiar
to his readers. For example,
(1) She sat
there all night as silent as the sphinx.
(2) If you take his parking place, you can expect
World War II all over again.
Allusions may
result from fairy tales, myths, legends and
fables, the Bible, famous literary works,
historical figures or events.
In
literature, an implied or indirect reference to a
person, event, or thing or to a part of another
text.
Allusion is distinguished from such
devices as direct quote and
imitation
or
parody
. Most allusions are
based on
the assumption that there is a body of knowledge
that is shared by the author and the reader
and that therefore the reader will understand
the author's referent. Allusions to biblical
figures and figures
from classical mythology
are common in Western literature for this reason.
However, some authors, such as
T.S.
Eliot
and
James Joyce
, deliberately
use obscure and complex
allusions that they
know few people would understand. Similarly, an
allusion can be used as a
straightforward
device to enhance the text by providing further
meaning, but it can also be used in a more
complex sense to make an
ironic
comment on one thing by comparing it to something
that is dissimilar.
The word is from the late
Latin allusio meaning “a play on words” or “game”
and is a derivative of the
Latin word
alludere, meaning “to play around” or “to refer to
mockingly.”
Hyperbole:
Hyperbole is the
deliberate use of overstatement or exaggeration to
achieve emphasis.
Instead of saying in plain
language
same ideas more emphatically by
saying is the prettiest girl in the worldor almost
died
laughing.
Effective hyperbole,
however, is more than just to emphasize something
in exaggerated terms. In the
hands of
experienced writers it can be used to achieve
various literary effects: to intensify emotion, to
elevate a person or thing to heroic or
mythical status, or to poke fun at or ridicule.
Moreover, its form, too,
can vary from a
phrase, a sentence, to a paragraph or paragraphs
of description. Sometimes a whole
story or
article may be one big hyperbole.
Examples of
these various forms and uses are given below.
Intensification of feeling or emotion
(1)
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. (A.
Pope)
(2) Jess went out. The whole world
seemed to have turned golden. He limped slowly,
with the blood
pounding his temples, and a
wild incommunicable joy in his heart. I'm the
happiest man in the world,he
whispered to
himself. the happiest man in the world.(Albert
Maltz: Happiest Man in the
World
(Jesse,
unemployed for six years, has just got a job
transporting nitroglycerin. His joy at getting
this
dangerous job, which might cost his life
at any time, is made more poignant by the
exaggerated
description of his feelings.)
(3) For she was beautiful ---her beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.
(y:
(4) Hamlet: I loved Ophelia:
forty thousand brothers could not, with all their
quantity of love, make up my
sum.
(peare:
Hamlet)
(5) Was this the face that launched a
thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers
of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with
a kiss! ...
Oh, thou art fairer than the
evening star,
Clad in the beauty of a
thousand stars ...
(Christopher Marlowe:
Faustus)
(6) I could a tale unfold whose
lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul,
freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes,
like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy
knotted and combined locks to part
And each
particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills
upon the fretful porpentine.
(Shakespeare:
Hamlet)
(7) Macbeth: What hands are here? Ha!
They puck out mine eyes.
Will all great
Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my
hand? No; this my hand will rather The
multitudinous seas incarnadine
Making the
green one red.
(Shakespeare: Macbeth)
Elevation to Heroic or Mythical Status
(8) They said, when he stood up to speak,
stars and stripes came right out in the sky and
once he spoke
against a river and made it sink
into the ground. They said, when he walked the
woods with his fishing
rod, Killal, the trout,
would jump out of the streams into his pockets,
for they knew it was no use putting up
a fight
against him; and, when he argued a case, he could
turn on the harps of the blessed and the
shaking of the earth underground. That was the
kind of man he was, and his big farm up at
Marshfield
was suitable to him ...A man with a
mouth like a mastiff, a brow like a mountain and
eyes like burning
anthracite ---that was Dan'l
Webster in his prime.
(t Benet:
(turn on
the harps ...underground: he could move Heaven and
Hell with his words.)
(9) And he rushed into
the wigwam,
Saw the old Nokomis slowly
Rocking to and fro and moaning,
Saw the
lovely Minnehaha
Lying dead and cold before
him;
And his bursting heart within him
uttered such a cry of anguish,
That the
forest moaned and shuddered,
And the very
stars in heaven
Shook and trembled with his
anguish.
(llow:
Humour or Ridicule
In contrast to elevation to heroic or
mythical propositions,hyperbole for humour or
ridicule makes use of
absurdly exaggerated
descriptions or situations to expose or to
deflate. The targets of attack may range
from
persons or things to subjects like bureaucracy or
automation.
(10) I sat for a while, frozen
with horror; and then, in the listlessness of
despair, I again turned the pages.
I came to
typhoid fever ---I read the symptoms ---discovered
I had typhoid fever, must have had it for
months without knowing it ---wondered what
else I had got ...I plodded conscientiously
through the
twenty-six letters, and the only
malady I could conclude I had not got was
housemaid's knee. (Jerome
)
(This is a
humorous dig at the hypochondriac ---a person who
always thinks he is suffering from some
real
or imaginary disease.)
(11) And at last, as a
due and fitting climax to the shameless
persecution that party rancour had inflicted
upon me, nine little toddling children, of all
shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were
taught to
rush onto the platform and call me
PA! (Mark Twain:
(A hit at the extent
American politicians will go to slander another
candidate.)
(12) It is, however, rung down
the curtain on American cookery. Nothing is
improved by the process ... Some meats turn to
leather. Others to wood pulp. Everything, pretty
much,
tastes like the mosses of tundra, dug up
in midwinter. Even the appearance changes,
oftentimes.
Handsome comestibles you put down
in the summer come out looking very much like the
corpses of
woolly mammals recovered from the
last Ice Age. (Philip Wylie:
Hyperbole, however, is not used only by poets and
writers. Businessmen and manufacturers use it,
too, for quite a different purpose. Here the
aim is to advertise their goods in as attractive a
way as
possible, so as to induce customers to
buy their products, and thereby increase sales. It
is not enough in
such advertisements to say a
thing is simply it must be perfect, colossal,
spectacular,
out-of-this-world, superb,
gorgeous, fantastic, etc. And
jumbo. A few
examples:
understatement (低调说法；曲言)：如 一种明抑实扬、言
轻义重的含蓄的说法，用来表达不愉快的事情时，
效果委婉，听者易于接受。smelly
（有味道，即stinking,发臭）。
1） 轻描淡写 ( 用rather,
quite, pretty, almost, a bit代替very )
She’s
rather good-looking. He has written quite a
number of novels. My friend was a bit upset by
his
son’s death. She was a little annoyed
when she found her valuable vase broken.
2）用反说代替正说 ( 常用含蓄的否定的方式，常使用no, not, never, none,
little, hardly等)
The man is no fool. He has
no small chance of success. I couldn’t be
happier.
His teacher said he wasn’t very
bright and that he wasn’t worth teaching.
He
conducted the experiment with no little
enthusiasm. Similar mistakes are not uncommon.
3）弦外之音 (
婉转
说法，用于代替直言不讳)
The beauty
of Guilin is more than I can describe. You should
have been here earlier.
● litotes
a
figure of speech, a conscious understatement in
which emphasis is achieved by negation; examples
are the common expressions “not bad!” and “no
mean feat.”
Litotes is a stylistic feature of
Old English poetry and of the Icelandic sagas, and
it is responsible for
much of their
characteristic stoical restraint.
The term
meiosis means understatement generally, and
litotes is considered a form of meiosis.
●
Meiosis
understatement for rhetorical
effect (especially when expressing an affirmative
by negating its contrary)
同义词：
litotes
Overtones
In a sense, overtones are
similar to euphemisms. Both of them involve the
reservation of the
speaker's attitude toward
the subject. The difference between them lies in
the purpose. Euphemisms are
usually used to
glorify an unpleasant or tabooed subject in order
to avoid hurting the feeling of someone.
They
are used to minimize the importance of the idea
expressed. In contrast, overtones are used to
intensify or increase the idea on the
audience's part. The speaker expects the audience
to understand
what he means. And, in fact, in
that given context, the audience never fails to do
so. Look at the following
sentences:
should have been here earlier. (meaning: You are
late. )
2.I wish I could sing better.
(meaning: I do not sing well. )
place has
been here since 1915, and no hurricane has ever
bothered it.(meaning: No hurricane
has ever
hit the place. )
if anyone would believe
that news ! ( meaning : No one believes it. )
once a man indulges himself in murder, very
soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from
robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath
Irony
It is a language device, either
in spoken or written form (verbal irony), in which
the real meaning is
concealed or contradicted
by the literal meanings of the words, or in a
theatrical situation (
dramatic
irony
),
in which there is an incongruity between what is
expected and what occurs.
Verbal irony arises
from a sophisticated or resigned awareness of
contrast between what is and what
ought to be
and expresses a controlled pathos without
sentimentality. It is a form of indirection that
avoids
overt praise or censure, as in the
casual irony of the statement “That was a smart
thing to do!” (meaning
“very foolish”).
Dramatic irony depends on the structure of a
work rather than its use of words. In plays it is
often created
by the audience's awareness of a
fate in store for the characters that they
themselves are unaware of, as
when Agamemnon
accepts the flattering invitation to walk upon the
purple carpet that is to become his
shroud.
The surprise ending of an O. Henry short story is
also an example of dramatic irony, as is the
more subtly achieved effect of Anton Chekhov's
story “Lady with the Dog,” in which an
accomplished Don
Juan engages in a routine
flirtation only to find himself seduced into a
passionate lifelong commitment to
a woman who
is no different from all the others.
The term
irony has its roots in the Greek comic character
Eiron, a clever underdog who by his wit
repeatedly triumphs over the boastful
character Alazon. The Socratic irony of the
Platonic
dialogues
derives from this
comic origin. Feigning ignorance and humility,
Socrates goes about asking silly and
obvious
questions of all sorts of people on all sorts of
subjects, only to expose their ignorance as more
profound than his own. The nonliterary use of
irony is usually considered sarcasm.
Innuendo: (暗讽） It is a mild form of irony,
hinting in a rather roundabout (曲折)way at
something
disparaging(不一致) or
uncomplimentary(不赞美) to the person or subject
mentioned. For example, the
weatherman said it
would be worm. He must take his readings in a
bathroom.
Euphemism: (讳饰) It is the
substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive
expression for one that may offend
or suggest
something unpleasant.
e.g. He passed
away in his sleep. (pass away: die)
A mild
form of irony, hinting in a rather roundabout way
at something disparaging or uncomplimentary to
the person or subject mentioned, as in:
(1)
make himself finish a book he
was reviewing. ---The Atlantic, Aug. 1981)
(2) weatherman said it would be warm. He must take
his readings in a
)
(The author
is hinting at the inaccuracy of the weatherman's
weather report. The weather is cold,
rather
than warm.)
Oxymoron: (矛盾修饰） It is a
compressed paradox, formed by the conjoining(结合)
of two contrasting,
contradictory or
incongruous(不协调) terms as in bitter-sweet
memories, orderly chaos(混乱) and proud
humility(侮辱).
An Oxymoron is a compressed
paradox, formed by the conjoining of two
contrasting, contradictory or
incongruous
terms, as in
---bitter-sweet
memories
---proud humility: this
refers to the quality of being humble, but not
servile
---orderly chaos: chaos
(confusion, disarray) exists, but there is some
method or order in the way
the things are
thrown around.
An understanding of oxymoron
can help us to appreciate more fully the implied
complexity of descriptions
and feelings. Like
paradox, an Oxymoron initially surprises one with
its incongruity of terms, which really
hides a
certain truth, or a significant point. Oxymoron
was once widely used in poetry, especially in the
16th and 17th centuries. Below are some well-
known examples:
(1) Juliet: O serpent heart,
hid with a flow'ring face!
Did
ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolfish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest
show!
Just opposite to what
thou justly seem'st,
A damned
saint, an honourable villain!
(Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet)
(Juliet is
here expressing her mixed feelings about Romeo,
when she hears he has killed Tybalt, her
cousin.)
At once, as far as angels ken,
he views
The dismal situation
waste and wild:
A dungeon
horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness
visible.
(John Milton:
(In this description of
Hell, Milton means to say that the flames in Hell
emitted no light and were
therefore more
torturous, for the sufferers burned in darkness.)
In a modern example, let us see how Russell
Baker, an American columnist, uses it to ridicule
the
Americans who will spend billions on space
research while neglecting basic social
improvements on
earth:
(3) So
there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor
magnificent bungler.
He can't
even get to the office without undergoing the
agonies of the
damned, but give him a
little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and
twenty
or thirty billion
dollars and, vroom! There he is, up on a rock a
quarter of a
million miles up in the
sky. ( The New York Times, July 21, 1969)
(The
oxymoron is effective because it contrasts the
magnificence of the deed of Americans landing on
the moon with the blunders and inadequacies of
Americans in authority, and their indifference to
earthly
social problems.)
An oxymoron can
formed in various ways, the most common being the
following:
a) adj + noun
a living
death, conspicuous absence, tearful joy, jarring
concord.
b) adj + adj
cold pleasant
manner, poor rich guys.
c) adv + adj
dully bright, mercifully fatal
d) verb + adv
hasten slowly, shine darkly
e) noun
+ noun
a love-hate relationship
As in paradox, the appreciation of an oxymoron
comes from trying to find the hidden truth, the
subtle
significance in otherwise conflicting
images or ideas.
(Extracted from The Rhetorical Devices by FQH)
Analogy
Analogy is also a form of
comparison, but unlike simile or metaphor, which
usually concentrates on one
point of
resemblance, analogy draws a parallel between two
unlike things that have several common
qualities or points of resemblance.
The
function of analogy differs also from that of
simile or metaphor. While the latter figures serve
to
heighten effect with vivid imagery, analogy
is chiefly used for the purpose of persuasion or
for the
explanation or exposition of an idea.
The analogy can be developed through as many
parallel similarities as the writer can think of,
to convince
the reader that because the things
are alike in so many respects, a conclusion drawn
from one suggests
a similar conclusion from
the other.
E.g.
(1) The chess-board is
the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the
universe; the rules of the game
are what we
call the laws of Nature. The player on the other
side is hidden from us. We know that his play
is always fair, just and patient. But also we
know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a
mistake, or makes
the smallest allowance for
ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest
stakes are paid, with that
sort of overflowing
generosity with which the strong shows delight in
strength. And one who plays ill is
checkmated
---without haste, but without remorse. ()
(Man
vs Nature -who will win? Huxley uses the analogy
of two players in a chess game to explain that
Man will succeed only if he plays by the laws
of Nature.)
(2) Take an aerial photograph of
Manhattan and reduce it three million times. You
now have something
that resembles the circuit
of 6000-plus transistors that must be imprinted on
a silicon wafer one-seventh
of an inch square.
Cover each transistor with a layer of insulation
and connect them all with a thin path of
aluminium. If there is a single defect,
equivalent in scale to a one-foot pothole in the
streets of Manhattan,
the whole chip will be
useless. (Time, 2.11.81)
(In this
analogy, the complexity and precision needed in
making microprocessors is explained.)
However, there is one thing about an analogy
that we must bear in mind. And that is, while an
analogy
sets out to persuade or to explain, it
does not necessarily set out to prove. Sometimes
an analogy can be
carried too far, and mislead
rather than convince. In reading an analogy,
therefore, we should be clear
about the
implications drawn from parallel comparisons, but
we should guard against unreserved
acceptance
of the argument. On the other hand, in writing
analogies, we should have a sense of
proportion, and not carry a comparison beyond
logical and reasonable boundaries.
Paradox
A paradox is a figure of speech
consisting of a statement or proposition which on
the face of it seems
self-contradictory,
absurd or contrary to established fact or
practice, but which on further thinking and
study may prove to be true, well-founded, and
even to contain a succinct point.
A good
example of a paradox is in this passage from
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet,
finding out who Romeo is, expresses her
feelings in this way:
(1) Nurse: His name is
Romeo, and a Montague,
The only son of your
great enemy.
Juliet: My only love sprung from
my only hate
Too early seen unknown, and
known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it
is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.
Those who are unfamiliar with the play would
think the statement only love sprung from my only
hate
paradox is used most effectively to
express Juliet's mixed feelings at the enormity of
her act: that she
has fallen in love with the
son of the family she has been brought up to hate.