1 Part A: INTRODUCTION 1) Rationale 1.1 Figures of speech and linguistics It has been customary to think figurativeness is a linguistic feature exclusive to the language of literature, but it is actually not When you ask somebody to “lend you his/her ear” or “give you a hand,” obviously you not mean you are in need of those body parts You are just using some figures of speech to express your need of attention and help Such colorful and vivid expressions are innumerable in colloquial language, which makes figures of speech a pervasive linguistic phenomenon both in our daily discourse and in written language Some people may address themselves to the query as to where the study of figures of speech should be in the family of linguistic studies Figurative language, by definition, is the language we use to mean something other than the literal meaning of the words So essentially the study of figurative language concerns the meaning and use of language, which are respectively the subject matter of semantics and pragmatics Apart from that, it is also closely related to discourse analysis and stylistics, especially literary stylistics, since different forms of literature tend to have different probabilities as to what group of figures of speech to be used and/or to what extent and at what levels they should be used Given these interrelations between the study of figures of speech and other domains of linguistics, it comes as no surprise that a linguistic major would become interested in this phenomenon In addition, figures of speech, as artistic ways of using language, are appealing by nature and their study is rewarding in that it does not only enhance our understanding of the special and effective way in which other people use the language but also helps to improve our linguistic competence, especially our figurative and literary competence 1.2 Figurative competence and communicative competence The use of figures of speech being so ubiquitous, it is virtually impossible for a language learner to communicate successfully in the target language without an adequate command of them Second and foreign language researchers have coined the term “figurative competence” to denote this special ability Some of them, including Danesi (1992, 1995) and Johnson and Rosano (1993), hold that second language curricula must include metaphors, idioms and other figurative language items in order to instill in language learners a functional communicative competence rather than just a traditional formal competence Danesi (1995), for instance, argues that second language learners not reach the fluency level of a native speaker until they have knowledge of “how that language ‘reflects’ or encodes concepts on the basis of metaphorical reasoning” (p 5) To put it more simply, researchers in the field imply that figurative competence is “likely to contribute positively to an overall level of communicative competence” (Littlemore, 2000) Nevertheless, it is observable that this linguistic skill is almost neglected in Vietnamese EFL classrooms From the author’s firsthand experience as a college English major, throughout her academic years, only once were figures of speech discussed, as part of an account of Lexical meaning, a chapter in the book An Introduction to Semantics This part covers less than four pages of the textbook, without a single accompanying activity It was evidently “introductory” and would by no means be able to equip students with a full understanding of those few figures of speech used as examples, not to mention an adequate command of figurative language in general Their sole purpose, as stated in the preface (Nguyen Hoa, 1998, p 2), is simply “to equip the student with an overview of” semantics, which has traditionally been regarded as a highly “knowledge-centered” course In the author’s skills courses, there was no place for figures of speech, either These facts spurred the author of this paper to research on figures of speech, with the hope of drawing EFL teachers and course designers’ attention to this particularly interesting and useful linguistic phenomenon 1.3 Figurative competence and literary competence The term literary competence was first introduced in the book Structuralist Poetics by Jonathan Culler in 1975 (p.114) It soon became the central concept of structural literary criticism and has been repeatedly referred to by scholars in various related disciplines ( Brumfit, 1981; Isenberg, 1990; Lazar, 1994; Aviram, 2004.) Under the strong influence of Chomsky’s generative model, where linguistic competence is put in opposition to linguistic performance, Culler holds that literature, analogous with language, is also a structural system with its own “grammar” – its own rules and conventions A competent reader of literature therefore needs to internalize that “grammar” in order to convert linguistic sequences into literary structures For example, there are special conventions in reading poetry that readers should be aware of, such as the rule of significance, the rule of metaphorical coherence, the rule of totality, the rule of thematic unity, the convention of genre, and other poetic traditions regarding the use of certain symbols and images (For the full argument, see Culler 1975, p 162) Among the conventions in literature, rhetorical figures are said to “lie at the basis of interpretation;” therefore, “training in rhetoric” is thought of “as a way of providing the student with a set of formal models which he can use in interpreting literary works” (Culler, 1975, pp 179-80) This naturally leads to the conclusion that figurative competence is an integral element of literary competence, which makes studies of figures of speech particularly interesting and beneficial to teachers of literature in second and foreign languages 1.4 Substitutive figures of speech Rhetoricians have catalogued more than 250 figures of speech and reasons of space not permit us to discuss all of them While many scholars working in the field go along with Jakobson (1963) and Ruegg (1979) that of the many tropes and figures none proved so popular as the pair metaphor and metonymy (Ruegg, 1979, p 141), it must be admitted that “over the years, metonymy has received much less attention than metaphor in the literature” (Carita Paradis, 2003, p 1) While metaphor has been investigated from many perspectives, metonymy has been mentioned mainly in the province of cognitive linguistics (see Barcelona (eds.), 2000; Panther & Radden (eds.), 1999; Dirven & Pörings (eds.), 2002) However, observation indicates that metonymy, as a rhetorical figure, along with synecdoche, deserves much more attention and research than what it has received so far; hence the focus of this paper on functions of these substitutive figures of speech Aims of the study This study is carried out to serve two main purposes: To explore the linguistic functions of metonymy and synecdoche with a focus on how these are used in poetry To give some suggestions on pedagogical issues relating to the teaching of these figures of speech in EFL skills classes and literature classes Scope of the study Although it is “impossible to isolate any single or special property of language which is exclusive to a literary work,” the fact is that in literature “language is used in ways which can be distinguished as literary” (Brumfit & Carter, 1986, p 6) And it is this very literariness that creates trouble for readers in general and language learners in particular Part of this literariness is formed by the special way in which figures of speech are used While idioms or conventional figures of speech can be treated as separate linguistic items and their meanings can be deduced based on contexts, in reading literature, determining what a writer or a poet is referring to or implying when he/she uses a figure of speech is often not as easy The reason is that it is his/her own figure of speech, one the reader might have never heard or seen before This explains our inclination to investigate the figures under consideration in literary texts However, given the limits of this paper, literature would still be too large a corpus to work on Thus, we intend to examine these figures of speech in a special genre of literature – poetry – for the following reasons Firstly, poetry is particularly rich in figurative language and can thus provide us with numerous examples of metonymy and synecdoche (although they are believed to function primarily in prose) A second reason, and probably the most important one, is that in poetry – “the form that most clearly asserts the specificity of literature, its difference from ordinary discourse” (Culler 1975, p 162) – these figures of speech, together with other stylistic features, cause considerable difficulties for EFL readers and students alike A survey carried out by Hirvela and Boyle (1988) on students’ attitudes towards literature genres reveals that poetry is the genre least enjoyed and most feared (Hirvela & Boyle, 1988, p 180) Our study, while analyzing these figures of speech in poetry, seeks to find ways to help students to interpret these figures with less difficulty and more enjoyment In helping them to analyze and appreciate these aesthetic devices in poetry, we hope to improve their knowledge of conventions in poetry and their literary competence in general The last justification for our choice is that this form of literature, though special in many ways, is essentially an example of language in use Hence, analysis of metonymy and synecdoche in this corpus will undoubtedly help illustrate their linguistic functions and conclusions drawn from the analysis will not only inform poetry readers, teachers and learners but also language learners on a larger scale There is every reason for us to believe that once students are able to recognize and analyze those figures of speech in poetry, they will be able to recognize and analyze the figures in texts of other types At the same time, the analysis will give us a better understanding of poetry in terms of stylistics Research questions The thesis will answer the following questions: 1) What are figures of speech? 2) Why are figures of speech employed? 3) What are funtions of the substitutive figures of speech? 4) What is the classification of figures of speech? METHODS OF THE STUDY With its subject matter being linguistic phenomena, this study is basically qualitative and descriptive It is an attempt to answer several open-ended questions regarding functions, aesthetic effects, and pedagogical values of metonymy and synecdoche These answers are grounded on a system of research methods, namely documentation, analysis and synthesis, all of which are used in combination in almost every chapter of the paper, though each of them prevails in a certain chapter or certain parts of a chapter In the first part, we review the literature of figures of speech in general and the two figures of speech of metonymy and synecdoche in particular Afterwards, we analyze the examples of these figures in some selected poems as illustrations of their functions Based on conclusions drawn from those analyses, we pinpoint several ways in which foreign language teachers of English can teach these figures of speech to EFL students Overall, the study is partly deductive and partly inductive DESIGN OF THE STUDY Apart from the introduction and the conclusion, the study consists of three chapters Chapter gives an overview on figures of speech in general and substitutive figures of speech in particular Chapter 2, the main part of the paper, focuses on two substitutive figures of speech, synecdoche and metonymy, providing an account of their definitions and linguistic functions, with each followed by an analysis of the figure of speech in poetry Chapter aims at raising some pedagogical issues concerning the teaching of these figures of speech and offers suggestions on applicable activities for use in EFL classrooms Part B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW AN OVERVIEW OF FIGURES OF SPEECH 1.1 What are figures of speech? Answering this question, The Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (2003) proposes the following definition: “an expression which uses words to mean something different from their ordinary meaning.” Along the same lines, The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Encyclopedic Dictionary (1992) describes a figure of speech as a “word or phrase used for vivid or dramatic effect and not literally.” The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (2003)’s full definition reads, “A form of expression (as a simile or metaphor) used to convey meaning or heighten effect often by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning or connotation familiar to the reader or listener.” There are varieties of slightly different ways in which people define figures of speech, but just as Quinn puts it, “the simplest definition of a figure of speech is ‘an intended deviation from ordinary usage’.” (1982, p 6) According to this definition, there are two criteria for an expression to be distinguished as a figure of speech: first, it is a deviant of ordinary language usage; second, it is used in such a way as to serve a certain purpose of the writer or speaker These definitions and criteria might evoke a chain of questions: What is the “ordinary”, or “literal” use of language? Must an intention be conscious? How you know a deviant when you see one? Quinn does not give direct answers to these problematic queries, but his analysis of the ordinary and extraordinary ways to use the coordinator and convincingly proves the existence of a system of ordinary usage of language, which we call “grammar.” Take the agreement between subject and verb in a finite clause as an example: When we say, “We were robbed,” we use were because it is the rule that we goes with were, because were is the ordinary way to conjugate the verb to be in the past tense for that person But if we say, “We was robbed,” then was is employed against the grammatical rule and therefore must be treated either as an error or a figure of speech At this stage, the existence of an intention plays a vital role in determining whether this is a figure of speech or not If an elementary foreign language learner is the one who writes the sentence, in a test, for instance, then we can certainly conclude that it is a mistake But when Joe Jacobs, a professional prize fight manager, shouted into the ring announcer’s microphone “We was robbed” on the night of June 21, 1932, we knew that it was far from being a mistake (Quinn, 1982, p 5) He broke the rule for his own purposes of adding emotion and emphasis to the accusation of injustice 1.2 Why are figures of speech employed? Figures of speech have traditionally been thought to function primarily as a kind of adornment or “make-up” used solely for the purpose of adding beauty to the language of the literary work Therefore, if there was a line between the form and the content of a literary work, figures of speech would obviously fit in the formal features and have nothing to with the content This implies that we can remove them from literary works without affecting their meanings However, the interwoven and interdependent relationships between form and content or meaning are such that it is actually very hard for one to draw a clear line between the two Even if one is persistent in separating the two, he/she is still unable to prove the foregoing claim valid in all cases Many figures of speech, especially tropes, help to create some aspects of meaning that an allegedly equivalent non-figurative phrase cannot convey An example of this is the catachresis in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Instead of “I will say angry words to her,” he writes “I will speak daggers to her.” (Cited in Harris, 2002) The catachresis here not only helps to express the meaning in a more vivid way, but also forms part of the meaning Daggers communicates much more than angry words It expresses the speaker’s hatred and fury to such a point that he almost wants to stab her with his words It is a feeling that would take a long sentence or even a paragraph to describe In cases akin to this, one rationale for using figures of speech, as Cacciari suggests when addressing the question of why speakers use metaphors, is because literal language is not very good at expressing the complexity of perceptual experience (Katz, Cacciari, Gibbs, &Turner, 1998) To put it more simply, figures of speech are employed for their capability to speak the unspeakable The same is not always true with other figures of speech, though In most cases, particularly when the figure in question is one other than a trope, there is often an alternative mode to express the meaning For instance, Sherwood Anderson may have well omitted the “ands” in italics in the following sentences in the short story “The Corn Planting.” “He made drawings of fish and pigs and cows and they looked like people you knew I never did know, before, that people could 10 look so much like cows and horses and pigs and fish.” He could have replaced these with commas if he had obeyed the “anding” rules The removal of the polysyndeton in this situation, however, deprives the sentences of “the sense of an ever lengthening catalogue of roughly equal members” (Quinn, 1982, p 11), but at least the denotative meaning remains the same In analogous instances, the figures of speech create an emphasis, amplify a meaning, draw a comparison or contrast, make a rhetorical point, or, generally speaking, express an idea in a novel and more colorful manner Commenting on “Philosophy of Style,” Herbert Spencer proves that a principle governing our communication is “the principle of economy,” by which he means language users normally try to express more meanings with fewer words This principle, as demonstrated in his analysis, applies for the use of words, sentences, and figures of speech Their efficiency can be seen from two angles First, they help speakers to pack much meaning into a small space Second, they save readers’ energy and time by “[bringing their minds] more easily to the desired conception” (Spencer, 1852) For example, perceiving the Pentagon would take much less time than perceiving U.S Defense Department While the second phrase activates in hearers’ minds the complex political system, the first one only calls up a picture And pictures are always easier to remember and recall than abstract concepts 1.3 Classification of figures of speech Rhetoric, in its attempt “to analyse and classify the forms of speech and make the world of language intelligible” (Barthes, 1967, p 817), named various figures of speech and over the centuries the number has reached many hundred Rhetoricians have also categorized these figures of speech basing on different sets of criteria Scholars of classical Western rhetoric have divided figures of speech into two main categories: tropes and schemes, with the former being figures of 55 3.3.3.2 Identifying the “deviant” The next step in interpreting the figures of speech is to identify them Often examples of synecdoche and metonymy are fairly easy to spot However, when the poem under consideration is syntactically complicated or the line division is confusing, it is necessary for students to write the lines down as sentences in form of prose They should be able to analyze sentence structures and normal uses of words in order to find the “deviant.” There are several techniques to help students at this stage A simple technique is to ask guiding questions For example, when teaching students the synecdoche in the first sentence of the poem “The Battle” by Louis Simpson, teachers can ask, “Who often march in the forest?” As for the metonymy in Teasdale’s poem, simple questions are, “What people often sell? What are the common features of these things?” Answering these questions will show what the normal collocations are, and thus reveal the non-literal element of the poem Another more student-centered approach to question making is to allow students to raise their own questions Teachers can encourage them to make as many questions regarding language or meaning of the poem as possible (see figure 10) On the one hand, these questions can be productively used for pair or group discussions On the other hand, question collections will give the teacher hints as to what is/ are problematic or interesting to a particular group of students, which will enable Barter to Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things; Blue waves whitened on a cliff, How can one sell loveliness? It’s not a physical object So why did the author use it? Soaring fire that sways and sings, Why “sell”, and not And children's faces looking up, How canr”?“eyes” lovewe “offe What can someone “arms” pay in and this sale? Holding wonder like a cup hold someone? That should be people Why eyes and arms but him/her make Music like a curve of gold, Scent of pine trees in the rain, 56 Eyes that love you, arms that hold, And,adjustments for the Spirit's stillcontent delight,or focus of the lesson Unquestionably, the appropriate to the most common questions out where the “deviant” is Furthermore, this Holy thoughts thatwill star point the night activity can establish in students the habit of asking questions – or, in Coulson et al’s words, starting conversations with poems (Coulson, 2002, pp 8-18) – , which is one crucial step in the process of making sense of poetry Figure 10: Questions making while reading poetry 57 Another useful activity is filling blanks to finish the poem Ronald Carter (1986, pp 112-113) uses this cloze procedure as “a form of prediction” in teaching prose The same activity can be used in guiding students to identify figures of speech in poetry Certainly, this activity can only be used at the beginning of the lesson, before students have the full version of the poem Substitutive nouns in metonymy and synecdoche should be omitted to invite students to make a guess and fill in blanks with words they think are appropriate (figure 11) The expected result is that most students will base on adjacent words and their typical A group of soldiers/ a battalion/ a regiment Marched through a forest Somewhere up ahead Guns thudded Like the circle of a throat The night on every side was turning red collocations to guess words in the blank and create non-literary sentences These students when introduced to the full version of the poem will immediately recognize deviant elements Other students, being aware of literariness in language of poetry, may attempt to create a figure by filling in literary words Their choice of image, however, will hardly be the same as the poets’, which would help them to grasp the artfulness of the poet’s diction and explain the figure’s effects more profoundly Figure 11: Blank filling in identifying metonymy and synecdoche in poetry After the signified and the signifier have been identified, a simple graphic representation of the two elements can be made in order for them to see the relations between the two nouns 3.3.3.3 Paraphrasing texts using non-literary language 58 “The possibilities of paraphrase in the teaching of literary idiom” in particular and in teaching literature in general have been acknowledged by many ELT scholars, among whom are Walter Nash (1986, pp 88), Carter and Long (1991, pp 88-90) Throughout our analysis of the examples in chapter II, paraphrasing, or rewriting the lines in ordinary language is also one notable repeatedly used strategy The act may remind us of conventional ways to teach and test literature (see Carter and Long, 1990, p 215) but they are essentially different Traditionally, paraphrasing is used to reveal the meaning of a poem or an extract from a poem Often teachers paraphrase texts to make meanings explicit to students, who will then take notes and memorize these paraphrases to answer questions in exams Therefore, the restatement herein is an end in itself By contrast, we approach paraphrasing as a means to recognize and assess literariness in texts We encourage students to express the same idea in non-literary language, which also means they will remove figurative elements from particular lines, and then put the paraphrase and original version in juxtaposition, comparing the two in order to detect the differences brought about by the figure of speech This “recognition of literariness,” as Cater (1986, p 110) aptly asserts, “is one of the most fundamental components in literary competence.” The outcomes of paraphrasing are numerous Often the paraphrase is either dull or awkward, because as Richard Wilbur the poet states, a real poem does not “too readily [submit] to paraphrase A poem ought not to be fissionable It ought to be impossible satisfactorily to separate ‘ideas’ from the poetic ‘embodiment’ When this can be done to a poem, it is a sign that the poem began with a prose ‘idea’ – i.e began wrongly – and that the writer was not a poet but a phrasemaker.” (Nash, 1986, p 70) Recognizing the awkwardness of their paraphrases and their inability to express the idea of the author non-literarily will dawn on students how effectively and appropriately the figure of speech is employed Furthermore, it 59 will show them the nature of poetry as a form of literature specifically used to speak the unspeakable A limit on the number of words in their paraphrase will illustrate the compactness of the poem and the expressive capacity of language in poetry in general and of these figures of speech in particular This strategy can also be used to assess a poem as a whole in form of a summary Again, a word limit is advisable since it will require students to understand the poem thoroughly in order to express the overall meaning of the poem without using too many words Above are the three main strategies which can be used as a starting point for identifying, interpreting and assessing the two figures of speech in poetry It should be kept in mind that metonymy or synecdoche used in a poem, in spite of being very small details, may reflect meaning of the entire poem The rule of unity in literary works requires that we examine each word in relation with other details and with the poem as a whole Teachers should therefore direct students to assess figures basing on their effectiveness in expressing the meaning of the whole poem In some cases, it is necessary to look for clues outside the poem to see how the context may have influenced the poet’s feelings and thoughts and hence affected his/her choice of words and images Some research on the author and background may help If students know, for example, that Louis Simpson was himself a soldier in World War II and that “The Battle” was published in 1955 in a collection called Good News of Death and Other Poems, they may interpret the poem and the metonymy in the first two lines differently However, it is essential to recognize that a poem’s meaning is not always limited to the author’s intention, and “The Battle” thus can be meaningful anywhere any time as an accusation of war in general 3.3.3.4 Rating a trope on a cline 60 It could be gathered from the previous chapter that one main difference between metonymy and synecdoche in everyday language and those in poetry is that in poetry they are used more creatively and purposefully When studying figures of speech in literary texts, it is necessary for students, especially those in literature classes, to assess these tropes in terms of originality, appropriateness, and centrality Carter and Long (1991, pp 113-114) introduce a cline as a means of assessing tropes Basing on these clines, we can rate the synecdoche in “Eyes that love you” as in figure 13, which means this substitution is central to the idea of the line, is quite appropriate and fairly original Clearly, the substitution is central to the Not central the Central idea of poem Appropriat and is Inappropria e te Not central Central not Original Worn/threadbar Appropriat just an Inappropriae Overall rating e te Original Worn/threadbar e Overall rating afterthought or an addition Strange as it may seem, substituting “people” with “eyes” is appropriate in that “eyes” are conventionally considered the window to human souls and thus capable of expressing emotions and compassion However, saying “eyes that love you” is so extravagant that the trope also reserves a high rating in terms of originality Figure 12: Rating the eyes-for-people substitution (Carter and Long, 1991, pp 113-114) Teachers should make it clear that there is no correct answer in such ratings Students may have different ideas on how a trope should be rated and they can share their ideas and argue for their choices in a group or pair discussion, which 61 could expand their knowledge on literary traditions as they listen to their friends’ experience with reading literature and enrich their own In many scholars’ views, this is one effective way of developing readers’ literary competence Brumfit (1981, p 188), for example, states, “The ability to perceive and explore relationships between literary texts and other literary texts (hence developing understating of the notion of convention and tradition) will be developed by reading texts linked by subject matter, by formal and structural similarity, by thematic intention, or by any other appropriate device.” Rating a trope’s originality is also one way to activate students’ literary experience and require them to make comparison between a literary device used in a particular literary text and those in other literary texts they have read before They may also resort to texts of the same subject to see what other authors have employed to substitute a kind of objects or people so that they can decide how original the trope in question is Generally, the activities we have presented so far aim at developing students’ literary competence, to develop in them “the fundamental ability of a good reader of literature [, which is] the ability to generalize from the given text either to other aspects of the literary tradition or to personal or social significances outside literature” (Brumfit, 1981, p 188) Poems used for teaching metonymy and synecdoche, besides other general criteria for text selections in using literature in language teaching, should contain recognizable examples illustrating these figures’ linguistic functions They should be creative figures so as to highlight stylistic differences between uses of metonymy and synecdoche in everyday language and those in literature In addition, these examples should provide a link, either direct or indirect, to the theme of the sample poem to help them practice skills of literary interpretation In this chapter, we have touched upon several pedagogical aspects of teaching metonymy and synecdoche, namely their possible teaching contexts, their 62 pedagogical values, and applicable activities for EFL classrooms Though by no means exhaustive, these suggestions demonstrate that these two figures of speech, if put into appropriate use, can be valuable resources for language teaching 63 PART C: CONCLUSION Metonymy and synecdoche are major linguistic phenomena in English, which are omnipresent in everyday language as well as in literature These two substitutive figures of speech, as suggested by their names, base themselves on the substitution of one word or object for another associated one In synecdoche, the lexical relation between the signified and the signifier is either hyponymy or partwhole In metonymy, relations involved in the substitutions vary greatly with one domain suggestive of the other Concerning the use of these figures in poetry, the analysis shows that they are useful literary devices in poetry While a number of figures are taken from nonliterary language, others are highly original and aesthetically effective It is proved that they are not just simply ornamental but on the contrary quite essential to the meaning of the poem In some cases, the effect is achieved by the figure’s pictorialness In others, the figures in question help reveal readings which would be otherwise very difficult to arrive at The findings on these figures’ linguistic functions and use in poetry have various pedagogical implications It is argued in this paper that these types of figures of speech can and should be taught in a wide range of EFL classes, most notably skills classes and literature classes, for multiple pedagogical values they offer ELT teachers In addition, a variety of classroom activities were introduced for teaching these figures, based on the linguistic functions of the two figures Particularly, several strategies to teach these figures in poetry were discussed in an attempt to facilitate students’ literature learning and improve their 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Senses, Facets, and Active Zones Retrieved Aug 18, 2005, from www.leaonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15327868ms1904_1 68 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration Acknowledgements List of tables and figures List of abbreviations Table of contents 1.2 Figurative competence and communicative competence 1.3 Figurative competence and literary competence .3 1.4 Substitutive figures of speech .4 Methods of the study 6 Design of the study CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW An overview of figures of speech 1.1 What are figures of speech? .7 1.2 Why are figures of speech employed? 1.3 Classification of figures of speech 10 Substitutive figures of speech 11 CHAPTER 2: SOME SIGNIFICANT SUBSTITUTIVE FIGURES OF SPEECH IN POETRY 13 2.1Synecdoche .13 2.1.1 Linguistic functions of synecdoche .13 2.1.2 Synecdoche in poetry 16 2.2 Metonymy 23 2.2.1Linguistic functions of metonymy 23 2.2.2 Metonymy in poetry 27 2.3 conclusions .34 CHAPTER 3: PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 37 3.1 Possible teaching contexts of synecdoche and metonymy 37 69 3.2 pedagogical values of teaching synecdoche and metonymy 38 3.3 Possible activities for teaching synecdoche and metonymy 40 3.3.1 Making Connection .40 3.3.1.1 Making Connection activities for synecdoche lessons 41 3.3.1.1.1 Making Spider-webs 41 3.3.1.1.2 Identifying the superordinates 42 3.3.1.1.3 Naming parts of things .43 3.3.1.2 Making Connection activities for metonymy lessons 44 3.3.1.2.1 Matching the associated words 44 3.3.2 Teaching metonymy and synecdoche in everyday language 46 3.3.2.1 Talking about metonymic and synecdochic vocabulary and phrases 47 3.3.2.2 Identifying, collecting and analyzing examples from everyday language 49 3.3.2.3 Comparing idiomatic expressions in English and in Vietnamese 49 3.3.3 Teaching synecdoche and metonymy using poetry .51 3.3.3.1 Recording initial responses 53 3.3.3.2 Identifying the “deviant” 55 3.3.3.3 Paraphrasing texts using non-literary language 57 3.3.3.4 Rating a trope on a cline 59 PART C: CONCLUSION 63 ... sound foreign to English language learners in Vietnam, they are included in various curricula for native students Some English language teachers in Vietnam may argue that these items are irrelevant... patterns reflected in the way notions and ideas are presented Most EFL classes in Vietnam these days are taught by Vietnamese teachers, which is one of their advantages in teaching idiomatic expressions... this activity They know, for example, that in Vietnamese culture, the body part associated with kindness is stomach/ belly and not heart – the Vietnamese equivalent of kindhearted is tốt bụng,