Saying what a device does
Naming a metaphor is worth almost nothing. The mark is in the sentence after it — the one saying what the comparison does to a reader. This is how to write that sentence reliably.
Why is identifying the technique not enough?
Because identifying it does not demonstrate understanding. A search-and-replace script could find every simile in a passage. What a script cannot do is say why this comparison, in this place, changes how the passage lands.
There is a second reason and it is the more useful one. A writer did not decide to include a metaphor; they decided to make you see one thing as another. The device is a record of a choice, so asking what the choice achieves is a way of reconstructing the writer's thinking — a skill that keeps working long after the terminology is forgotten.
This is also why device-listing reads so badly. A paragraph naming six techniques and explaining none tells a marker the student recognised words on a page. A paragraph explaining one properly tells them the student read.
Where it turns up
- Advertising — every ad is a set of choices about what to compare you to and what to leave out
- Political speech — “a war on X” imports everything a war implies, which is the point of the word
- News — “protesters clashed with police” and “police charged protesters” describe one event and assign responsibility differently
- Your own writing — the same question — what does this word do — improves it immediately
- 1. The words, first
- 2. The sentence
- 3. What kind of effect to look for
- 4. Choosing which devices to write about
- 5. What costs marks
The words, first
The idea: The three parts of the sentence you are trying to write.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Technique | The named move: metaphor, enjambment, short sentences, a low camera angle. |
| Effect | What it does to a reader — what they see, feel, expect or assume as a result. |
| Meaning | What the text is saying overall. The effect has to connect to this or it is decoration. |
| Tenor and vehicle | In a comparison, the thing being described and the thing it is compared to. Naming both makes the analysis precise. |
| Connotation | The associations a word carries. Usually where the writer's judgement is hiding. |
| Diction | Word choice — the most reliable evidence for tone. |
| Syntax | Sentence construction. Carries tone as surely as word choice does. |
The sentence
The idea: Technique, where, effect, why it matters. Four parts, one sentence, writable under exam pressure.
Build it up.
- “The author uses a metaphor.” — a label.
- “The author compares the city to a machine.” — the comparison named.
- “Comparing the city to a machine strips its people of agency.” — an effect.
- “Comparing the city to a machine strips its people of agency — machines have parts, not participants — which prepares the reader for the narrator's later indifference to a stranger's collapse.” — effect connected to meaning.
That last version earns the mark. Notice it quotes nothing and still works, because the comparison is specific enough to stand in for a quotation.
What kind of effect to look for
The idea: Each family produces a characteristic kind of effect, which narrows the search considerably.
| Family | Typical effect | Question to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Comparison | Changes how the reader sees something | What does the vehicle bring with it? |
| Sound | Controls pace and the feel of the line | Does the sound agree with the sense? |
| Structure and syntax | Controls what the reader learns, and when | Why revealed here rather than earlier? |
| Irony and gap | Creates distance, judgement or suspense | What does the reader know that someone does not? |
| Diction | Carries attitude | What would a neutral word have been, and why not that? |
The most useful single question is the last one. Slender, thin and scrawny denote the same thing; choosing the third is a judgement, and naming that judgement is analysis.
Choosing which devices to write about
The idea: Two or three doing real work beats six named in passing.
A test. If you cannot finish the sentence “…which makes the reader…”, do not write about that device. It is probably there and probably not doing anything you can demonstrate.
Prefer what is unusual. A passage of ordinary sentences with one two-word fragment is telling you where to look. A poem that breaks its metre in one line is doing the same. Departure from a pattern is the loudest quiet signal a text has.
Quote short. A phrase you can analyse closely beats four lines you gesture at. Long quotations eat word count and rarely earn it back.
What costs marks
The idea: Four, all of them versions of stopping too early.
- The device list. Six named, none explained.
- “This creates imagery.” Of what, to which sense, producing what?
- “This makes it more interesting.” True of every device ever used, and therefore says nothing.
- Effect with no link to meaning. It has to matter to what the text is saying.