#FIGURE OF SPEECH SOFTWARE#

Keeping this in mind, you may trust an intelligent common sense to tell you when figure of speech is, or is not appropriate. That fault is, that the figure has not a clear thought behind it.

There is some fault with a figure of speech which cannot be translated at will into clear, plain, literal statement. Observe that the thought is there otherwise the figure would be empty and bombastic. Now has not the cold, literal statement come to life? Do you not see the great ship flung about as a plaything by the wild waters? Such a figure appeals to the imagination, and thus renders the expression of the thought more vivid and interesting. Suppose we use a comparison and say: The ship was tossed like a chip on the waves. But can we not picture that in some way, so as to make it more impressive? Thus we may say in direct, literal statement. Such a figure may be a well-chosen comparison called in rhetoric a simile. Often the figure goes beyond any mere choice or arrangement of words, into the very structure and essence of thought. This was because of Homer’s use of daring metaphors, such as, ‘An arrow impatient to be on the wing’, and ‘A weapon thirsting to drink the blood of an enemy. Aristotle said that Homer was the only poet who had found out “living words”. This may be in the choice or application of single words so as to make them mean more than in ordinary use. A figure of rhetoric is a form of expression that departs in some way from direct, literal statement. What are called Figures of Rhetoric or Figures of Speech?Īn important means of doing this is by the use of what are called Figures of Rhetoric or Figures of Speech. Metaphor is another type of figure of speech, in which one thing is represented by a different word with descriptive power, as in “the moon was a ghostly galleon.” Simile, another type, likens one thing to another, as in “the moon was floating like a balloon.” Other examples of figure of speech include hyperbole (exaggeration), euphemism (substituting mild terms for blunt ones) and personification (speaking of non-human entities as if they were people).Keeping in mind that the only real use of words is for the expression of thought, we wish you now to consider how the thought may be expressed with special clearness, force and beauty.

#FIGURE OF SPEECH SOFTWARE#

For example, someone handed an emergency assignment on Friday afternoon might say, “Great! I was wondering what I was going to do this weekend.” A human might immediately understand that as ironic, but a software program would need to understand the rules of irony and have some knowledge of when it was likely to apply. Verbal irony often means that the literal meaning of a statement is completely reversed. Irony, another kind of figure of speech, can only be understood in context. To an AI program or a non-native speaker, however, that sentence could be very difficult to decipher because its two parts, if taken literally, are self-contradictory: It never rains | it pours. Most native English-speakers can interpret the idiomatic sentence, “It never rains but it pours,” to mean that events, such as misfortunes, seem to happen in clusters. An idiom is a phrase or sentence that means something different from what a literal interpretation would suggest.

Idioms are probably what is most commonly thought of as figures of speech. In contrast, a figure of speech is usually presented in a group of words no larger than a sentence. An entire piece of content, such as a poem or a story, may be spoken of as figurative language. Because a figure of speech is not meant to be understood literally, it complicate decoding by both humans and artificial intelligence (AI) software systems that use natural language understanding ( NLU). Language processing software requires word sense disambiguation ( WSD) to reliably interpret figures of speech and other examples of linguistic ambiguity.įigures of speech are one type of figurative language, which also includes imagery and sound-based enhancements such rhyming schemes or onomatopoeia. Figures of speech are literary devices intended to make language more interesting, intense or colorful. A figure of speech is a word or phrase that is not intended to be interpreted literally.

Figure of speech