Why does a slogan stick in your head? Why does one line of a song make people cry and another leave them cold? Much of the answer lies in figures de style: deliberate ways of bending ordinary language to create an image, a sound, an emphasis or a surprise. You already use them without naming them. Je meurs de faim (I'm starving) is a hyperbole; ce n'est pas mauvais (it's not bad) usually means it's good and is a litote; libre comme l'air (free as a bird, literally free as the air) is a comparison. In Grade 12 you need to do two things with them: recognise them by their French names in a poem, a song, a speech or an ad, and explain their effect, which is where real analysis happens. Naming a metaphor earns nothing on its own; saying what the metaphor makes the reader see or feel is the point. You also learn to use them yourself, so your own persuasive writing and speeches gain force.
Images: comparing and transforming
| Figure | How it works | Example |
|---|---|---|
| la comparaison | links two things with a comparison word: comme, tel, pareil à, semblable à, ressembler à, aussi… que | Son esprit est libre comme l'air. (His mind is as free as the air.) · Mes rêves sont aussi fragiles qu'un château de sable sur la plage. (My dreams are as fragile as a sandcastle on the beach.) |
| la métaphore | the same link with no comparison word: one thing simply is the other | Un mur de brume bloquait l'horizon. (A wall of fog blocked the horizon.) · Son indifférence me glace. (Her indifference freezes me.) · « Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver » (Gilles Vigneault, Mon pays, 1964) |
| la métaphore filée | one metaphor extended over several sentences or lines | La ville s'éveille : ses artères se remplissent, son cœur bat déjà au rythme des klaxons. (The city wakes: its arteries fill, its heart already beats to the rhythm of the horns.) |
| la personnification | gives human actions or feelings to a thing, an animal or an idea | « Ô temps ! suspends ton vol » (Lamartine, Le Lac, 1820): time is asked, like a person, to stop flying. |
| l'apostrophe | speaks directly to an absent person or a thing | The same line by Lamartine: the poet addresses le temps as tu. |
A Canadian classic: Mon pays
Gilles Vigneault wrote Mon pays in 1964 for an NFB film, La neige a fondu sur la Manicouagan. Its opening metaphor, « Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver » (My country is not a country, it's winter), turns the northern climate into an identity: cold, snow and wide empty spaces become what defines the land and its people. The line became so well known in Québec that it now works almost like a proverb. Analysing it, you would note the metaphor, the correction structure ce n'est pas… c'est…, and the effect: the speaker redefines pays (country) in terms of an experience rather than borders.
Saying more, or less, than you mean
| Figure | How it works | Example |
|---|---|---|
| l'hyperbole | deliberate exaggeration | Je te l'ai dit mille fois ! (I've told you a thousand times!) · Je meurs de faim. (I'm starving.) |
| la litote | says less to suggest more, often with a negation | « Va, je ne te hais point » (Corneille, Le Cid, 1637, Act III, scene 4): Chimène, whose father Rodrigue has killed, cannot say I love you, so she says I don't hate you. The classic example in French literature. |
| l'euphémisme | softens something painful or unpleasant | Il nous a quittés. (He has left us = he has died.) · les personnes à mobilité réduite (people with reduced mobility) |
| l'antithèse | places two opposite ideas side by side | « Je vis, je meurs : je me brûle et me noie » (Louise Labé, Sonnet VIII, 1555): love as life and death, fire and water at once. |
| l'oxymore | joins two contradictory words in one expression | « Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles » (Corneille, Le Cid, Act IV, scene 3): a dark brightness, the faint light of the stars. |
| la gradation | a sequence that rises (or falls) in intensity | « Va, cours, vole, et nous venge » (Le Cid, Act I, scene 5): go, run, fly, each verb faster than the last. |
Sound and repetition
| Figure | How it works | Example |
|---|---|---|
| l'allitération | repeats a consonant sound | « Pour qui sont ces serpents qui sifflent sur vos têtes ? » (Racine, Andromaque, 1667, Act V, scene 5): the repeated [s] imitates the hissing of the snakes Oreste sees in his madness. |
| l'assonance | repeats a vowel sound | « Les sanglots longs / Des violons / De l'automne » (Verlaine, Chanson d'automne, Poèmes saturniens, 1866): the nasal vowels of sanglots [ɑ̃], longs and violons [ɔ̃], and automne [o] stretch the line like a slow, sad note. |
| l'anaphore | repeats the same word or words at the start of several lines or sentences | Nous voulons un parc. Nous voulons une piscine. Nous voulons qu'on nous écoute. (We want a park. We want a pool. We want to be heard.) |
| la répétition | repeats a word or phrase anywhere for emphasis | Il pleut, il pleut, il pleut encore. (It rains, it rains, it rains again.) |
| la question rhétorique | a question that expects no answer because the answer is obvious | Qui pourrait être contre la sécurité des enfants ? (Who could be against children's safety?) |
| le parallélisme | repeats the same sentence structure | Plus de pistes cyclables, moins de bouchons. (More bike lanes, fewer traffic jams.) |
Analysing in three steps: repérer, citer, interpréter
1. Repérer (identify): name the figure precisely. 2. Citer (quote): give the exact words in quotation marks, with the line number for a poem. 3. Interpréter (explain the effect): what does it make the reader see, hear or feel, and how does it serve the text's meaning? Useful phrases: Le poète emploie une métaphore pour… (The poet uses a metaphor to…), Cette allitération en [s] évoque… (This alliteration in [s] evokes…), Cela crée un effet de… (This creates an effect of…), L'auteur suggère que… (The author suggests that…), On peut interpréter ce vers comme… (This line can be read as…). Use the présent for analysis: Racine crée une atmosphère d'horreur.
The basics of French verse
| Term | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
| le vers; l'alexandrin, le décasyllabe, l'octosyllabe | a line of poetry; a line of 12, 10 or 8 syllables | French verse counts syllables, not stresses. The alexandrin usually has a pause after syllable 6 (la césure), splitting it into two hémistiches. |
| le e muet (mute e) | an unstressed e that may or may not count | It counts before a consonant inside the line (sif-flent sur), is usually dropped before a vowel (un-e âme → u-n'âme; the endings -es and -ent still count there, carried by the liaison), and is not counted at the end of the line (têtes). |
| la strophe: le quatrain, le tercet | a stanza; of 4 lines, of 3 lines | A distique has 2 lines. |
| les rimes: plates, croisées, embrassées | AABB, ABAB, ABBA | Rhyme in French is about the final sounds: têtes rhymes with fêtes. |
| le sonnet | 14 lines: in the French form, two quatrains, then two tercets (the English sonnet is built differently) | Often in alexandrins; the last line (la chute) often brings a surprise. Rimbaud's Le Dormeur du val (1870) is a famous example: only the last line reveals that the sleeping soldier is dead. |
| la ballade | a medieval fixed form: usually three stanzas with a refrain, then a shorter envoi | François Villon (15th century) is its best-known master. |
- Slogans use imperatives, rhyme, alliteration and parallelism so they are easy to remember: Bougez plus, vivez mieux ! (Move more, live better!) uses an imperative and a parallel structure.
- Headlines use metaphor and wordplay to catch the eye: La ville se noie sous la neige (The city is drowning under snow) is a metaphor, with hyperbole.
- Images and layout carry meaning too: the logo, the font, the colours and what is placed largest. Ask what the ad wants you to feel before it wants you to buy.
- Didactic folk songs and fables teach a lesson through a story or a refrain; look for the moral and how repetition drives it home.