Semantics Metalanguage P.2

Question 1

Personification

Answer 1

Personification is a figurative language technique that gives human attributes to non-human entities or objects.

“Lightning danced across the sky.”
“Justice is blind and, at times, deaf.”

Question 2

Animation

Answer 2

The classification of nouns, based on the degree to which they are “alive” or animate.

“The clock’s face” and “the face of the clock”

Question 3

Puns

Answer 3

Pun is a wordplay technique that uses multiple meanings of a word or similar-sounding words to create a humorous or rhetorical effect.

A horse is a very stable animal.
An elephant’s opinion holds a lot of weight.
A pessimist’s blood type is always B-negative.

Question 4

Lexical ambiguity

Answer 4

When a phrase or text can be interpreted in multiple ways, making it challenging to understand without additional context or information.

“I saw bats.”
This sentence can be interpreted as:
- I used a tool with a sharp blade to slice
through baseball bats/nocturnal flying
mammals.
- I viewed some nocturnal flying mammals.
- I viewed baseball bats.