- [Instructor] Hello readers,
we've got a bear of a lesson today
and it's all about figurative language.
Sorry, I should back up.
I know I said we have a bear of a lesson.
I don't literally mean
that I've got a bear.
That would be extremely sweet.
Love a bear, love bear's whole thing
with the snacking and the sleeping
and the eating of fish, but no.
A bear of is a figurative expression
that means something difficult.
So a bear of a lesson
is a difficult lesson
and that's what we're talking about today.
Not bears, sorry, but
non-literal uses of language,
which we call figurative
language or figures of speech.
Figurative language says one thing
but means another.
I could say that my colleague Allison
is an eagle-eyed editor
and when I say that I don't
mean that she literally
has an eagle's eyes in her head.
That would be a terrifying
achievement of medical science.
No, I'm saying that she
is sharp and attentive
in the same way that an eagle is.
So I'm saying something
that is not literally true
in order to express
something that is true,
that Allison is good at editing.
Would you call that a lie?
I'm not sure I would.
It's just a non-literal
way of expressing myself.
So, having gotten the
question of whether or not
I'm a dirty rotten liar out of the way,
let's talk about some different varieties
of figurative language.
First, the simile.
A simile is a comparison
between two things
that uses like or as.
If I were really hungry,
I could say that my stomach
was gurgling like a tar pit
or that I was as hungry
as a ravenous wolf,
and again, neither of these
things are literally true.
If my stomach were making
actual tar pit noises,
I would probably need to go to a hospital.
But what do those examples
tell you about the way that
I, the speaker, think about my hunger?
Animals and people get stuck in tar pits,
they're gloppy, they
pull things into them,
they slow things down.
Sorry T-Rex.
Therefore, I'm saying that
my hunger is slowing me down.
Or, if I'm comparing myself to a wolf,
you can imagine me looking
lean and desperate,
saliva dripping from my jaws
at the mere thought of food.
I could really go for a cheese
danish come to think of it.
So that's simile.
The second figure of speech
I wanna talk about today
is the metaphor.
And what's a metaphor?
Cows and sheep!
Sorry, I couldn't help it.
No, a metaphor is not a meadow for.
Metaphors are another way
of comparing two things,
but this time there's no like or as.
We're walking this language
tightrope without a net now.
You aren't signaling with like or as
that you're making a
figurative comparison,
so you have to use context
to communicate clearly.
At the beginning of this video
I said this was going to be
a bear of a lesson.
That's a metaphor.
There's a Linda Ronstadt
country song from the 70s,
called "Love is a Rose,"
which is all about how to
take care of a relationship
through the metaphor of tending
a flower with thorns on it.
The difference between my stomach
is gurgling like a tar pit
and my stomach is a gurgling tar pit
is the difference between
simile and metaphor.
Simile uses that like or as comparison
whereas metaphor just
straightforwardly says
thing X is thing Y.
Love is a rose, my tummy's a tar pit,
which was not nearly as
successful of a song.
Another way to use figurative language
is personification, which let's
just break that word down.
It means to describe something
as though it were a person.
To say that differently,
it's ascribing human characteristics
to non-living things.
The wind howled through the mountains.
The car grumbled as I threw it into gear.
The storm raged.
These are things that people do,
but I'm applying that
language to inanimate things,
like wind and cars and
storms in order to express
the way these things are behaving.
The car is not literally grumbling,
"Aw man, I can't believe
David has to drive me today."
It's making noises that I am choosing
to identify as unhappy.
The greatest kind of figurative language
in the entire universe is hyperbole.
By exaggerating, I'm expressing
emphasis and importance.
This summer, I'm going
to read a million books
and eat a literal actual ton of hot dogs.
This is not true.
In fact, this is impossible.
That is too many hot dogs,
those are too many books,
each of which are sentences
I never expected to say,
but I'm trying to express my enthusiasm
for both books and encased meats,
and I'm doing that by
being, you know, extra.
The final kind of expressive language
I wanna talk about today isn't
exactly figurative language,
it's the language of
allusions and references.
Where you make comparisons
to characters or events
from literature, or movies, or culture.
Also note that it's allusion with an A,
as opposed to illusion with an I.
An illusion with an I
is like a magic trick.
Here are some examples of allusions.
Oh, you'd have to be Superman
to lift that fallen tree.
Or, you have a Gollum-like obsession
with that stuffed animal.
Now these comparisons only work
if the person you're talking
to understands the reference.
Superman has super strength,
Gollum, from "The Lord of the Rings,"
can't stop talking about
how much he loves this
one object, the ring.
If you don't know the reference,
then it's all just noise.
One tip is to read up on mythology.
You'd be surprised how
many times ancient gods,
like Zeus, Poseidon, and
Apollo come up as you read.
So that's what we're working with here.
Simile, love is like a rose.
Metaphor, love is a rose.
Personification, my car grumbled.
Hyperbole, my mom grounded
me for eight trillion years.
And allusion, I feel
mightier than Hercules.
That's figurative language folks.
You can learn anything, David out.
