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PERSONIFICATION AND ITS STYLISTIC DEFINITION
Ma’rufxonov Maqsudxon Umidilloxon
og’li, Student of Andijan State Institute of
Foreign Languages (Uzbekistan)
maksudkhonmarufkhonov@gmail.com
Supervisor: Kurbanov Muzaffar Abdumutalibovich,
Professor of Andijan State Institute of Foreign Languages (Uzbekistan)
Abstract: The article about personification and its stylistic definition.
Personification is a stylistic device that makes people and persons from abstract or
general things. The personification is a secondary form of the metaphor and is
heavily based on allegory. The style figure furnishes non-living beings with
characteristics or actions that are otherwise only attributed to living creatures. Thus
the personification increases the vitality and vividness of language.
Keywords:
personification,
quality-strength,
impersonification,
personification examples, personification definition.
Аннотация: Статья о персонификации и её стилистическом
определении. Персонификация – это стилистический приём, который
наделяет абстрактные или общие понятия человеческими качествами. Она
является вторичной формой метафоры и тесно связана с аллегорией. Этот
стилистический приём приписывает неживым объектам характеристики или
действия, свойственные только живым существам. Таким образом,
персонификация повышает выразительность и образность языка.
Ключевые слова: персонификация, качество-сила, олицетворение,
примеры персонификации, определение персонификации.
INTRODUCTION
Personification is sometimes referred to as an anthropomorphic metaphor. It
means that personification is a type of metaphor. Personification shouldn’t be
confused with anthropomorphism. It is true that there is a transference in
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anthropomorphism, as well. However, only the names of humans are transferred to
the place names or lifeless objects. However, the qualities or other characteristic
features may not be represented in place names. For instance, when we name a café
with a human’s name such as “Fiona”, only the name is transferred onto the café. It
doesn’t mean that the café should reflect the qualities or characteristic features of
that person. When the place or other object names are named with the names of
animals or birds, we call this zoomorphic metaphor.
For example, the name of the energy drink called “Bull” is taken from a
strong animal which is a male cow. Its name together with its quality-strength has
been transferred onto the drink. When one sees the name, he has such an impression
that if he drinks “Bull” he will feel energetic and strong like a bull. Personification
can sometimes be intermingled with metonymy, as well. E.g. When we say “Vienna
is calling” in the Eurovision Song Contest, we personify the city.
The listener had such an idea that the city itself calls and speaks. But it occurs
with the omission of the word “jury” or “reporter” who conducts the show program.
Here the words ‘jury’ or ‘reporter’ are hidden inside Vienna. But there is no hidden
character in personification and there is a direct transference between inanimate
objects and humans.
METHODS
Though they bear the same meaning in most cases, there is a minute
distinction between them, as well. Impersonation may sometimes mean imitating
someone or something. Impersonation occurs when someone pretends to be another
person. In impersonation, human qualities and characteristic features are transferred
onto humans.
However, impersonification does not imply to transfer of human qualities and
characteristics onto the same species. In impersonification, the qualities or
characteristics of lifeless objects are transferred onto humans while it occurs on the
contrary in personification. Impersonification like personification is a type of
metaphor. For example, You sometimes grumble hard even though you don’t rain.
As seen from the above-mentioned example, the qualities or characteristics of the
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sky as a natural phenomenon have been transferred to humans. Humans have been
impersonificated here artfully.
Another example of impersonification is seen in the lyrics of the song named
“Ave Maria” by Beyonce. E.g. You are my Heaven on earth You are my hunger, my
thirst [2] In afore-said lines, a lover is described in the face of heaven, hunger and
thirst. Hence the human has been impersonificated by the writer. Impersonification
is usually met in poems and colloquial speech.
When the qualities of inanimate objects are transferred onto humans and
accompanied by the conjunctions ‘like’ and ‘as’, the examples should be referred to
as similes. For instance, It was one of the best five-day breaks I ever had.
I slept like a stone every night [5]. Another example taken for
impersonification and personification is in the lyrics of a song by
“DidrikSolliTangen”. For example, You say I am the moonlight I watch you at night
[3]. In the above-mentioned example, we can see both personification and
impersonification in the first line.
So, there is a fusion of personification and impersonification in the same
sentence. The pronoun ‘You’ has been impersonified with the word ‘moonlight’.
Herewith, when moonlight ‘speaks’ by saying ‘You say’, it is personified. Since the
act of ‘saying’ is referred to humans, it can be considered personification, as well.
RESULTS
Personification is a stylistic device that makes people and persons from
abstract or general things. The personification is a secondary form of the metaphor
and is heavily based on allegory. The style figure furnishes non-living beings with
characteristics or actions that are otherwise only attributed to living creatures. Thus
the personification increases the vitality and vividness of language.
Sometimes it is very difficult to draw a clear distinction between
personification, metaphor, allegory, and all varieties and special forms of the stylistic
figures mentioned. This is simply because personalization, allegory, and metaphor
often go hand in hand (→ examples of the metaphor).
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The definition of personification is the attribution of human characteristics to
something non-human. Technically, personification is a type of metaphor that is used
as a literary tool to make writing more interesting and vibrant. Yet, while
personification can be used for stylistic purposes, it can also help the reader better
understand a description.
When we say attribute human characteristics, we mean almost anything that
can be related to humans: div parts, organs, senses, emotions, actions, thoughts and
so on. And, by something non-human, we mean anything that is not a person: trees,
animals, buildings, seasons, countries, and anything else you can possibly think of.
Personification can be very simple, such as using the word she as a pronoun for a
ship, or it can be more stylized and complicated. Below is an example of
personification used from a passage of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s
Night Dream: “The moon, methinks, looks with a wat'ry eye; And when she weeps,
weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforced chastity" Consider how many
human qualities have been attributed to the non-human elements in the passage: The
moon is using the human sense of sight, the action of crying and has been given an
eye. The flowers are also given the human action of crying, as well as the emotion of
lamentation.
Personification Examples:
The personification definition can be best understood with examples. Below
is a selection of original examples of personification:
The houses lined the street, silently watching the people walk by.
Winter shook its chilly head and plotted snowy destruction outside.
Thunder screamed and lightning danced in the sky.
That last beer in the fridge just called my name.
The car ground to a halt; its engine giving out with a final sigh of
resignation.
The table stubbornly refused to move from its spot.
The stars
dutifully
saluted the coming night.
Frost coldly embraced the trees and hedges.
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France was calling her troops home from war.
The candlelight stretched and yawned, and then burst into life.
The wind held its breath for a second, then bellowed around our ears
again.
The sunflowers nodded their heads in the gentle breeze.
The bread jumped excitedly out of the toaster.
He was not the type of man to fail to answer when opportunity knocked
on the door.
The statues
gazed solemnly
at each other across the vast museum.
Dawn
was
peeping timidly over the mountaintops.
Each morning my alarm clock yells at me.
Those red roses were certainly an unhappy bed of flowers.
Cigarettes and alcohol controlled his early life.
The hands of justice will grab you, eventually.
Tokyo is always awake and untiring.
The streets tricked people into believing they were straight.
His happiness died that morning with the news.
The ship skipped across the waves, knowing she
was near
her home
port.
The team was crying out for some new players.
The kebab definitely didn’t agree with his stomach.
DISCUSSION
Why do we use personification in writing? The easy answer is that it is a
matter of style; after all, personification is widely used in poetry and literature.
However, it also helps us understand things better by the process of adding human
qualities to them.
Consider that the practice of personification has been carried out by humans
for as long as we have been able to communicate through language. For example,
ancient Greeks and Romans used to endow things like rivers, mountains, weather,
the sea, and the stars with human qualities; albeit, they imagined them as deities. The
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Greeks and Romans did this because, among other reasons, it helped them understand
the world around them.
While today we know why the wind blows or why a volcano erupts, you can
appreciate how these ancient people chose to describe natural events in human terms
– because it makes it easier to understand them. Modern language can work in the
same way. Personification can help bring language to life in a way that we recognize
and identify with, and that helps us understand it better.
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