Figurative Language Versus Literal Language

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Figurative Language versus Literal Language Domonic Lastoria Dr. John Becker Critical Thinking 4/28/2013 Figurative Language versus Literal Language In this assignment, I will be going over the misuse of figurative language. The misuse of figurative language a lot of times makes it rather difficult for others to think productively about certain topics and issues. Throughout this assignment, I will provide many different types of figurative language and describe how they are used and examples of how they could lead to misunderstanding. The first is Idioms. “An Idiom is a word or phrase that is not taken literally” (LoveToKnow Corp, 2013). Most idioms are phrases where the words have a different meaning than what the dictionary has for each word. This can make the phrase hard to understand for some people. An example for an idiom is when a person states that something is a “flash in the pan”, it actually has nothing to do with a pan, but actually the phrase is referring to something that sounds like it would be a giant success, but doesn’t work out in the long run. An Analogy is a comparison between two things that are alike in some way, but different in others. An example of an analogy would be “I feel like a fish out of water”, what they person is trying to say is that the person is not comfortable with their surroundings, but also could also mean a person feels like he is drowning. Some analogies can be understood by the people that speak the same language, also like certain social groups, or if you live in a different region or country. A Metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common (Nordquist, 2013). An example of a metaphor would be when someone says that “you are the light of my life”, this is not to say the
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