英语写作中的修辞手法

Rhetorical Devices

1.Periodic Sentence—The essential elements in the sentence are withheld until

the end.圆周句

What are the periodic sentences used in the text?

（1）Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid.

（2）If Hitler imagines that his attack on Soviet Russia will cause the slightest divergence of aims or slackening of effort in the great democracies, he is woefully mistaken.

2.Rhetorical Question修辞问句，反问

（1）How was it possible to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worth of note?

（2）Shall we allow those untruths to go unanswered? Where in the text can you find this device?e.g. （1）… but can you doubt what our policy will be? 3. Parallelism (Parallel Structure)

（1）No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

（2）In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for them. In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon your brother, the worst of your bad race, to answer for them separately.

Where in the text can you find this device?

（1）We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. （2）We shall fight him by land, we shall fight

him by sea, we shall fight him in the air…

（3）Behind all this glare, behind all this storm…

（4）I see the Russian soldiers standing…I see them guarding…I see the ten thousand villages…I see advancing upon…I see also the dull…I see the German bombers…I see that small group…

（5）That is our policy and that is our declaration.

（6）We shall be fortified and encouraged in our efforts… We shall be strengthened and not weakened in determination and resources.

（7）Let us learn the lessons already taught by such cruel experience.

Let us redouble our exertions… 3.Inversion倒装

Where in the text can you find this device? （1）From this nothing will turn us—nothing. （2）but this I will say

5. Repetition—原词重复或同义词重复

(1)We have but one aim and one single, irrevocable purpose. (2)He has so long thrived and prospered. (3)We will never parley, we will never negotiate.

6. Metaphor. 通常用指某物的词或词组来指代他物，从而暗示它们之间的相似

之处，如“忧愁之海”“a sea of troubles”或“整个世界一台戏”“All the world’s a stage”(莎士比亚)。

（1）The world is a stage.

（2）Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. （3）Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Where in the text can you find this device?

(1)rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its peoples from his yoke

(2)standing on the threshold of their native land

7. Alliteration压头韵，即在一群字或诗中, 第一个字母或发音的重复。

1. The sun sank slowly.

2. . . . on scrolls of silver snowy sentences (Hart Crane) 在写满银色雪般句子的卷轴上(哈特·克兰)

3. How and why he had come to Princeton, New Jersey is a story of struggle, success, and sadness.

4.fighting for his hearth and home

5.Let us learn the lessons already taught by such cruel experience

6.I see also the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on.

8. Simile明喻，标志词常用like, as, seem, as if, as though, similar to, such as等。1He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

2.I wandered lonely as a cloud.

3.Einstein only had a blanket on, as if he had just walked out of a fairy tale.

4.He looked as if he had just stepped out of my book of fairytales and had passed me like a spirit.

9. Metonymy 借喻,转喻——不直接说出所要说的事物,而使用另一个与之相关的事物名称.

I.以容器代替内容,例如: 1. The kettle boils. 水开了.

2. The room sat silent. 全屋人安静地坐着. II.以资料.工具代替事物的名称,例如: e.g.: Lend me your ears, please. 请听我说.

III.以作者代替作品,例如:

e.g.: a complete Shakespeare 莎士比亚全集 VI.以具体事物代替抽象概念,例如:

e.g.: I had the muscle, and they made money out of it. 我有力气,他们就用我的力气赚钱.

More examples

1.Are you reading much Shakespeare?

2.All my students read Emerson, Thoreau and Huxley. 3.The English simply worship the crown. 4.He is too fond of the bottle. 5.The pen is mightier than the sword.

10. Synecdoche 提喻——用部分代替全体,或用全体代替部分,或特殊代替一般. as in “hands” for “men who do manual labor” , “a fleet of 50 sails” for “ a fleet of

50 ships”.

1.Have you any coppers?

2.There are about 100 hands working in his factory.(部分代整体)他的厂里约

有100名工人.

3.He is the Newton of this century.(特殊代一般) 他是本世纪的牛顿.

4.The fox goes very well with your cap.（整体代部分）这狐皮围脖与你的帽子

很相配.

11. Personification 拟人

（1）The night gently lays her hand at our fevered heads.（把夜拟人化）

（2）I was very happy and could hear the birds singing in the woods.（把鸟拟人化）（3）My only worry was that January would find me hunting for a job again.

12. Hyperbole 夸张

（1）I beg a thousand pardons.

（2）Love you. You are the whole world to me, and the moon and the stars.

（3）en she heard the bad news, a river of tears poured out. （4）wave ran mountain high.

13. Irony 反语，反讽——用相反意义的词来表达意思的作文方式。 （1）It would be a fine thing indeed not knowing what time it was in the morning.早上没有时间观念还真是一件好事啊（真实含义是应该明确早上的时间观念）（2）. . . until we are marching backwards to the glorious age of the sixteenth century.（3）“Of course, you only carry large notes, no small change on you,” the waiter said to the beggar.

（4）This hard-working boy seldom reads more than an hour per week.

（5）Until we are marching backwards to the glorious age of the sixteenth century.（6）“Why do you come so soon? You used to come at ten o’clock, and now you come at noon.”

（7）Robbing a widow of her savings was certainly a noble act.

14. Pun 双关——主要以相似的词形.词意和谐音的方式出现. 1.She is too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little for a

great praise.

2.An ambassador is an honest man who lies abroad for the good of his country.

3.If we don't hang together, we shall hang separately. 15. Parody 仿拟，戏仿——这是一种模仿名言、警句、谚语，改动其中部分词语，从而使其产生新意的修辞。例如:

1.Rome was not built in a day, nor in a year.

2. A friend in need is a friend to be avoided.

3.If you give a girl an inch nowadays she will make address of it.

16. Antithesis 对照，对比，对偶

对偶一种将强烈对立的想法并列于稳定、对等的短语或语法结构中的修辞方法。这种修辞指将意义完全相反的语句排在一起对比的一种修辞方法。e.g.

1.Hee for God only, shee for God in him (John Milton)他只为上帝，她则为他心

中的上帝。(约翰·米尔顿)

2.Not that I loved Caeser less but that I loved Rome more. 3.You are staying; I am going. 4.Give me liberty, or give me death.

5.Any man or State who fights against Nazism will have our aid. Any man or

State who marches with Hitler is our foe. 17. Paradox悖论，隽语

似是而非的评论；看起来自相矛盾但可能正确的说法；这是一种貌似矛盾,但包含一定哲理的意味深长的说法,是一种矛盾修辞法.

（1）More haste, less speed. (proverb)欲速则不达

（2）The child is the father to the man.（童年时代可决定人之未来）三岁看大，四岁看老。

（3）Failure is the mother of success. (proverb) （4）The more you give, the more you have. (proverb) （5）His main feature is his featurelessness 18. Oxymoron 反意法，逆喻

矛盾修辞法；一种把互相矛盾或不调和的词合在一起的修辞手法，如在震耳欲聋的沉默和悲伤的乐观，以不协调的搭配使读者领悟句中微妙的含义。例如:

（1）No light, but rather darkness visible.

没有光亮，黑暗却清晰可见

（2）The state of this house is cheerless welcome.

（3）cheerful pessimist, living death, bitter sweet; victorious defeat; sweet sorrow, glorious defeat, intimate strangers

19. Allusion典故

e.g.: Those same kids on line are just a few key strokes away from Pandora’s hard drive.

20. Onomatopoeia拟声——The use of words that, when pronounced, suggest their meaning, such as “hiss” or “buzz”.

1.And murmuring of innumerable bees…

2.The ice was all around; It cracked and growled, and roared and howled.

3.She brought me into touch with everything that could be reached or

felt—sunlight, the rustling of silk, the noises of insects, the creaking of a door, the voice of a loved one.

4.On the root of the school house some pigeons were softly cooing.

21. Euphemism委婉语

as in the use of “pass away or pass on” for “die”, “misinform” for “lie” in “the gentleman is misinformed”, “remain” for a “corpse”, “visiting the necessary” for “going to the toilet”, etc.

22. Transferred Epithet修饰语移置; 移就

It is the transference of an adjective or a noun to which it is not wholly appropriate. It is a very common poetic device.

1.I spent sleepless nights on my project.

2.Even so, the risk of discovery was beginning to cause Pettit sleepless nights.

3.throwing a reassuring arm round my shoulder.

4.Winter kept as warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, … (T.S.Eliot) Translate the following into Chinese:

1)我只有一个目标：摧毁希特勒。这样一来，我对各种事物的态度就容易决定

得多。如果希特勒入侵地狱，我至少要在下院替魔鬼说几句好话。 2)如果希特勒认为他对苏俄的进攻会使民主阵营各国不那么专心一致要消灭希

特勒，或放松这方面的努力，那他就大错特错，并将为此付出代价。

3）他所以要摧毁是因为他希望如果得手，他就可以从东线把其陆、空军主力抽回来，投入对英伦三岛的进攻。他清楚地知道如果他不能征服英国，他将因其罪行而受到惩罚。

4）他希望他能在比过去更大的规模上，再次重复他一直得心应手地使用的策略：将敌人各个击破。一旦这一策略获得成功，他就可以上演最后的一幕，将西半球置于其意志和制度的统治之下。不征服西半球，它的全部侵略成果就保不住。