In an attempt to define rhetorical discourse, the paper examines the speeches of Ahab, the main character from Herman Melville's book, "Moby-Dick." The paper first determines if Ahab's speeches actually fall into the category of rhetorical discourse by examining his major speeches, and then ascertains whether his speeches are bombs…

Obscenity and profanity may be defined synonymously as making public that which is private through the use of words which society considers taboo. Obscenity can be classified in three general ways: religious profanity, excretory profanity, and sexual profanity (i.e., copulative terms, genitalia terms, and sexual irregularities). The purposes of…

This volume defines, explains, and traces the origins of figures of speech and style in poetry. Using examples from the works of Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Byron, Emerson, and countless other poets--well known or obscure, such forms as similies, analogies, prosopopeia, metonomy, and many others are described. (Author/KS)

Eight context setting paragraph-length stories were used to measure third through sixth graders' figurative language comprehension. Significant differences were found in the overall performance of the two groups on both conditions at each grade level tested. Metacognitive factors appear implicated in learning-disabled children's understanding of…

Hearing impaired students practice recognizing metaphors in an activity that features 38 short stories accompanied by an illustration and a metaphorical interpretation found in one of four sample sentences. (CL)

Metaphors were embedded at Reaction or Outcome positions in a story grammar structural form. Recall of metaphors and literal statements with comparable meanings was equal among seven-, nine-, and 11-year-olds. Recall was better if statements were in the Outcome position, but metaphors were comprehended equally well in both positions and had no…

Learning disabled students can be helped to understand figurative language by emphasizing the difference between literal and figurative statements, providing opportunities for practice, and extending the thinking and perceptual skills to other content areas. (CL)

This article examines the relevance of metaphor from a number of perspectives; its dominant part in everyday speech, its use as a teaching tool, and its role in education and training. Metaphor is seen as a vehicle for personal statement, a device for clarifying abstract concepts and for adding color to descriptions, and as a socio-cultural…

The paper looks into visualisation in learning mathematics from three perspectives: It starts from a discussion what it takes to make a sign, an inscription on the blackboard, on paper or on a computer screen to an image. Here we will look into the question of "similarity" and point to the possibility of having different perspectives on the same…

Figurative language enlivens a text, providing visuals in the minds of readers. This lesson will have students listening to and reading selected texts as they seek out their favorite literary devices. During the five to seven 50-minute sessions, grade three through five students will: acquire a clear understanding of the concept of figurative…

Although 12 preadolescents who had been diagnosed as language impaired during preschool performed as well as a control group on certain tests involving literal aspects of language and on a nonverbal intelligence test, they were deficient in understanding metaphoric sentences and in performing the cognitive task. (Author/CL)

Thirty-eight hearing adults' ability to comprehend English homonyms was evaluated from their transcriptions of two versions of a videotaped story, signed in either a literal sign model (Seeing Essential English 2) or a conceptual sign model (Pidgin Sign English). Participants' transcriptions were more successful after watching the literal version.…

Describes the visual counterparts of 14 figures of speech and their usefulness to designers of illustrations, visual symbols, and hypermedia. (SR)

Suggests that composing "haiku" requires a discipline in a person's thinking and emoting patterns similar to that of a general semantics system for training people to make sense. Describes how such haiku are written and gives some guidelines to help individuals create their own. (PA)