The Effectiveness of Figures of Speech
by Sharp
E-mail: huang_sharp@sohu.com, huang_sharp@tom.com

Our mother tongue, the Chinese language, is particularly rich in figures of speech, so is English. Honestly, we have to admit, too, that it is the rhetorical devices and figures of speech of English that are the most difficult part for us, Chinese, to master. Figure of speech, as we all know, are usually forcible, terse, vivid or suggestive, etc. The same meaning could, of course, be set forth in some other ways, but not with equal force, vividness or terseness, etc. the functions lie in the effective communication of ideas, feelings, and events not only in writing also in reading and understanding
Some writings, like advertisements and journals, are to be read tomorrow, other have the quality of permanence. Besides, many, each standing at his or her own position and looking at it from his or her own angle, express the same thing. Therefore, the diction, the style, the technique, and ways of rhetorics (including the figures of speech) of each writer would be different after each one¡¦s weighing and scrutinies. It is impossible to get the essence of these without knowing rhetorics during the process of writing and reading.
Each figure has its own form and characteristics, and its own way of achieving effect. Sometimes, two or more figures can be used together for greater impact. For examples, it will be more vivid and colorful to say that ¡§The pen is to a writer what a gun is to a fighterƒñ¡¨ than to say, ¡§The pen is very important to a writer¡¨. Similarly, ¡§Imperialism is a paper tigerƒò¡¨ is an expression more suggestive of outward ferocity and inner weakness than the literal statement ¡§ Imperialism appears to be strong but inwardly it is weak.¡¨ At the same time, saying ¡§ He is fond of the bottleƒó¡¨ is more polite and euphemistic than saying ¡§He is a drunkard¡¨, the former expresses a disagreeable and embarrassing fact in a mild, agreeable way. ƒñis a simile, ƒóis a euphemism, and ƒò is a metaphor, and with metonymy, hyperbole, personification, paradox etc, they make up a score or more of figures of speech most commonly used today..
There are about 65 to 200 or more types of figures exited in English. They were mainly associated with poetry and poetic writing, in which they still were most lavishly used. But now they can be found in every kinds of writing¡Xprose, dramatics, scientific and other non-literacy writing, even in advertisement. In fact, effective writing of any kind is seldom without a figure or two and the over-subtle distinctions of one kind or another are very difficult for us to master clearly, so we must pay much attention to the characteristics and endeavor to grasp them thoroughly in order to compose sentences or paragraphs which are effective rhetorically and stylistically and understand the connotations really implied in the contents which are full of rhetorical devices, esp. figures of speech.