Emotive and Figurative Language
Identify authors' use of vivid, emotive vocabulary, such as metaphors, similes, personification, idioms, imagery and hyperbole.
Read this first
Writers choose words to steer how you feel. Spotting the steering is the skill.
Words you need
- Emotive language
- Words chosen to stir feeling.
- Hyperbole
- Deliberate exaggeration, not meant literally.
- Idiom
- A phrase whose meaning is not its literal words.
- Imagery
- Language that builds a picture in the mind.
Worked example
e.g. Analyse: The tiny cafe was drowning in a sea of rubbish.
- Step one: find the words carrying feeling. Drowning and sea.
- Step two: name the device. Nothing is really drowning, so it is not literal.
- This is metaphor, pushed to exaggeration. That makes it hyperbole too.
- Step three: ask what it makes you feel. Overwhelmed, on the cafe's behalf.
- Step four: ask why the writer wants that feeling.
- Perhaps to argue for a bin collection. The words are doing persuasive work.
- Full answer: hyperbolic imagery that makes the problem feel urgent and unfair.
Name it, say what it makes you feel, then say why the writer wants that.
Practice
Name it, feel it, then ask why.
1I have told you a million times. Which device?with a picture
AnswerHyperbole.
2It cost an arm and a leg. Which device?with a picture
AnswerAn idiom.
3Why choose slaughtered over beat in a match report?with a hint
Need a hint?
What feeling does it add?
AnswerIt is emotive. It makes the defeat sound total and brutal.
4The silence was a heavy blanket. Name it and give the effect.with a hint
Need a hint?
What does it make you picture?
AnswerMetaphor. The silence feels smothering and physical.
5Rewrite neutrally: The council butchered the budget.on your own
AnswerThe council reduced the budget.
6Why is the third step, asking why, the most important?on your own
AnswerIt moves from spotting a device to explaining the writer's purpose.
Think about it
1
Why is emotive language so common in headlines?
One good answerThere is little space. One loaded word does the work of a sentence.
2
Can figurative language be dishonest?
One good answerIt can mislead. Drowning in rubbish may describe three bags.
Common mistakes
Figurative language only belongs in poetry.
It is everywhere: news, adverts, sport reports, ordinary speech.
Naming the device is the answer.
Naming is step one of three. The effect and the purpose earn the marks.