Language is employed to one of three purposes: to inform, to convince or to persuade. The first requires the basic talent of telling what we know. The second demands reasoning. The third warrants all the help we can obtain from the use of figures of speech to endow us with powers of persuasion.
A figure of speech is a rhetorical device that produces a special effect by employing words in a distinctive manner. Though there are more than a hundred of them, I’ll focus on some of the most common figures of speech. These are vivid and striking images that will enrich your speech or writing. These, if correctly and imaginatively used, can make our style more lively, interesting and impressive.
Figurative language is often associated with literature, and with poetry, in particular. But the fact is, whether we are aware of it or not, we use at least some figures of speech in everyday life in our writing and....
