Linguistics & Semantics

Lesson 5: Semantics

Other Figures of Speech

Image, icon, metaphor, and symbol are figures of speech, or artistic conventions, where one thing stands for another in a kind of semantic relation. The term ‘imagery’ is one of the most common in modern literary criticism and, of course, one of the most ambiguous.

Imagery signifies a) all the objects and qualities of a sense perception referred to in a poem or other work in literature, whether by a literal description, thanks to allusion, or in the analogues (the vehicles) used in its simile and metaphors”. b) Imagery is used to refer to visual imagery only. c) Imagery is used to refer figurative language in general especially the vehicles of metaphors and similes” (Abrams, H. M ‘A Glossary of Literary Terms IVth edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Wiston, 1981, page 78).

We can talk about ‘image’ as a representation of an object or scene which convey only itself. The word ‘image’ in the daily usage refers to a physical depiction of something such as in a photographic image or in common speech. The image exists also in a mental representation ,by extension, as in the memory or in the imagination.

Thus, it is a rhetorical decoration in writing and speaking , a vivid description presenting or suggesting images of sensible objects. An example can be found in the common experience of looking at a bright light source and then closing one’s eyes and still seeing the ‘afterimage’. There are several kinds of Imagery: verbal imagery can be applied to the senses; visual imagery is necessary to evoke a picture of something (a beautiful picture that represents a landscape); auditory imagery suggests a sound; tactile imagery is usually applied to the sense of touch (a soft caress); olfactory imagery belongs to the sense of smell.

Imagery is an essential convention of art in general and of literature but we shouldn’t confuse it with other tropes such as ‘metaphor, simile, symbolism’. Its aim is to give description an immediate power to grip the imagination. Allegory appears when a progression of events or images suggests a translation of them into a conceptual language. Conceit is an extended metaphor and sometimes involves unsurprising comparisons.

Metonymy is a substituting naming: an associated idea names the item ( Homer is hard for ‘Reading Homer’s poems is difficult’). Simile is a figure in which similarity between two objects is directly expressed (Your face is like a moon: we use like/as). All these rhetorical figures are very important to grasp the real meaning of words, phrases, sentences and finally texts and so they are introduced in the field of textual linguistics or textual analysis.

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