Essential Functions of Language and Literary Figures

Functions of Language

• Representational: Used to communicate information about reality.
• Emotive: The sender focuses on themselves to express feelings.
• Appellative: The sender attempts to influence the recipient to act or speak.
• Phatic: Used to verify that the communication channel is open or closed.
• Metalinguistic: Used to talk about the language itself, i.e., the code.
• Poetic: The sender uses language to create a work of art, surprising the recipient with poetic devices not found in regular speech.

Literary Figures of Repetition

• Onomatopoeia: Repetition of phonemes to imitate the sounds of reality (e.g., a stutter).
• Alliteration: Repetition of phonemes to create a specific sound effect (e.g., the winged soul of the roses).
• Parallelism: Repetition of the same syntactic form in two or more verses (e.g., "tell you that, you say that").
• Anaphora: Repetition of a word at the beginning of a verse.
• Enumeration: A sequence of words whose meanings are interrelated.

Figures of Thought

• Comparison (Simile): Expresses a resemblance between two terms (e.g., "Two socks soft, like hares").
• Antithesis: Comparison of expressions with opposite meanings (e.g., "If you love me, do not do me wrong").
• Hyperbole: An intentional exaggeration.
• Epithet: An adjective indicating a quality that accompanies the noun (e.g., "Lady, white as snow").
• Personification: Attributing human actions or qualities to inanimate objects.
• Metaphor: Identifying two situations that resemble each other (e.g., "Poppy, blood of the earth").
• Metonymy: Replacing a term with another based on a relationship of causality, contiguity, or authorship.
• Synecdoche: Using the whole for the part or the part for the whole (e.g., "200 head of cattle").
• Symbol: A physical object given an intellectual or spiritual meaning.
• Allegory: A continued metaphor throughout a text where components are translated into a metaphorical sphere.

Other Rhetorical Figures

• Hyperbaton: Disruption of the syntactic order for stylistic effect.
• Rhetorical Question: A question that does not expect an answer, used for emphatic reflection.
• Irony: Implying the opposite of what is expressed.
• Litotes: Denying the opposite of what one really wants to admit.
• Paradox: An apparent contradiction that makes sense in context (e.g., "I live without living in me").