Language Devices In English Writing Quiz

Answer: Assonance

Assonance is used to help create atmosphere or to give rhythm. One well-known example, beautifully demonstrated by the talented Audrey Hepburn in the movie 'My Fair Lady', tells us that 'The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain'.

Answer: Personification

Personification helps to give interest to an idea.

William Wordsworth's famous poem 'Daffodils', also known as 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', uses personification several times:

'I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.'

Here 'Lonely as a cloud', 'a crowd, a host of golden daffodils' and 'Fluttering and dancing' are all examples.

Answer: Simile

Similes are used to create interest or to help make a connection for a listener or reader. It is a very common technique and there are many well-known examples:
'As brave as a lion', 'As bold as brass' or 'As bright as a button' are common ones.

Answer: Alliteration

Alliteration is used in poetry to help create flow, and can be used in other types of writing to help emphasise phrases. Alliteration can also be used for fun, for example, in tongue-twisters. 'Peter Piped Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers' is one such example.

Answer: Onomatopoeia

One of my favourite devices, onomatopoeia is used to give effect or emphasis to a piece of writing.

Edgar Allan Poe uses onomatopoeia and personification effectively in 'The Bells':

'Hear the loud alarum bells,
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune...
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows...'

Answer: Hyperbole

Hyperbole can be used both humorously and seriously to great effect.

In 'As I Walked Out One Evening' by WH Auden, the narrator uses hyperbole to emphasise his love:

'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

Answer: Malapropism

The term 'malapropism' is named for a character, Mrs. Malaprop, a character in 'The Rivals' written in 1775 by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Most of her speeches contained one of these errors. Her name comes from a French phrases, 'mal à propos' or 'inappropriate'. Some of her examples are:

'He is the very pineapple of politeness!'

'She's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.'

'Illiterate him quite from your memory'.

Answer: Tmesis

Tmesis is a device used to give emphasis or humour to a situation. George Bernard Shaw used it to great effect with the character of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion: 'Fan-bloody-tastic' or 'abso-blooming-lutely'.

Answer: Diaresis

Diaresis is also the name given to the diacritic (or accent mark) placed on a vowel letter to show that the sound should be broken into two parts.

Some examples are naïve, Chloë and Zoë, and are normally words borrowed from other languages.

Answer: Kenning

Kenning dates back to Old Germanic and Old Norse and Icelandic sagas, it is a technique used to provide a fancier description of a common word, usually a noun.

The saga of Beowulf provides a number of examples, starting with the name of the hero, 'Bee Wolf', a kenning for bear.

'Whale-road' for the sea
'Battle sweat' for blood
'Heaven's candle' for the sun
'Ring-giver' for a King
'Corpse-maker' for Grendel and
'Bone-cage' for a body

Beowulf is over 3 000 lines long, and the longest epic poem written in Old English. The manuscript on which it was written is believed to date from around the end of the tenth century, CE. The events it describes are from around 400 years earlier, but no clear date for its composition can be determined.