Literal and Figurative Meaning: Study Guide (English Literature 5.2)

Poets choose words for what they say and for what they suggest. The same phrase can mean one thing on the surface and something else beneath. Reading poetry well means moving between the two without losing either. This topic teaches you to distinguish literal from figurative meaning, to explain what specific words and phrases do, and to explain how exaggeration and understatement convey a perspective.

Literal and figurative meaning

Literal meaning is what words state on the surface: the thing, action or quality as it is. Figurative meaning is what the words suggest beyond that surface: an idea, feeling or comparison the literal sense points to. In “The sea has turned”, the literal meaning is that the tide has changed direction; the figurative meaning, depending on the poem, might be that a mood or a situation has reversed.

A quick test: read the phrase literally. If the literal reading is impossible, absurd or beside the point, the phrase is almost certainly working figuratively, and your next question is what does it suggest? Robert Burns’s speaker promises to love “Till a’ the seas gang dry”. Literally, the seas will never dry; the impossibility is the point, because it measures a love that does not end.

Many poems carry both layers at once. A speaker may describe a real walk (literal) that also stands for a stage of life (figurative). Keep both in view and explain the relationship between them.

Specific words and phrases: connotation, multiple meanings and descriptive words

Connotation is the cluster of associations a word carries beyond its dictionary meaning (its denotation). Thin, slender and gaunt describe a similar physical fact with different attitudes: neutral, admiring, alarmed. Choosing among them is a way of conveying a perspective.

Three ideas help you explain the function of a word or phrase:

1. Words with multiple meanings or connotations add nuance or complexity that can contribute to interpretation. A word like lease (in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, “summer’s lease hath all too short a date”) is both a legal term and a measure of time, and the double sense gives the line its tone of loss as a contract running out.
2. Descriptive words, such as adjectives and adverbs, qualify or modify the things they describe and also affect how readers respond to them. A lean dog and a starved dog change the reader’s pity.
3. The function of a word is what it does in its place: it sets a tone, sharpens an image, reveals the speaker’s attitude, or ties one part of the poem to another. To explain function, compare the word with an alternative the poet could have chosen and say what would be lost.

Hyperbole and understatement

Hyperbole exaggerates; understatement minimises. Each focuses attention on a trait of the object and conveys a perspective about it. Exaggerating a quality (“a thousand miles of grief”) draws attention to the quality’s intensity; minimising one (“a bit of a storm” for a hurricane) draws attention to the speaker’s restraint, irony or reluctance to show feeling. Both depend on a gap between what is said and what is meant, and the size of the gap carries the attitude.

A method: literal, figurative, word, effect

1. Literal. State what the words say on the surface.
2. Figurative. Say what they suggest beyond it, if anything.
3. Word. Pick the specific word or phrase (a connotation, a descriptive word, an exaggeration) that carries the suggestion.
4. Effect. Explain what it does for the speaker’s attitude and for the poem’s meaning.

Worked example 1: hyperbole in a love song

Robert Burns’s “A Red, Red Rose” (1794) contains these stanzas:

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I: And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run.

Step 1, literal. The speaker promises to keep loving until the seas are dry and the rocks melt in the sun, and for as long as “the sands o’ life” run.

Step 2, figurative. Seas do not run dry and rocks do not melt, so the promise is hyperbole: an exaggeration that measures duration. “The sands o’ life” figuratively compares a lifetime to sand in an hourglass.

Step 3, word. “Till” is repeated at the join of the two stanzas (“Till a’ the seas gang dry: / Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear”), so the exaggeration is stressed twice. “Gang dry” and “melt” are verbs of ending and change; the loved one is set against processes that take unimaginable time.

Step 4, effect. Hyperbole focuses attention on the length of the love and conveys an extravagant, sincere perspective: the speaker uses impossible conditions because ordinary words feel too small. The shift to “the sands o’ life shall run” then brings the promise back to a human scale: not forever, but as long as life lasts. The poem’s warmth comes from this movement from cosmic exaggeration to a modest, real limit.

A model sentence. Burns’s repeated “Till a’ the seas gang dry” exaggerates the speaker’s constancy into the impossible, so that the later turn to “the sands o’ life” makes the promise both extravagant and humanly sincere.

Worked example 2: understatement and plain speech

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (1609) refuses the conventional exaggerations of love poetry. Its opening line is “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”. The last four lines read:

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare.

Step 1, literal. The speaker says his beloved is not extraordinary: her eyes are not like the sun, her voice is not music, and she walks like an ordinary person.

Step 2, figurative. The comparisons he rejects (eyes like the sun, lips like coral) are the stock figures of love poems, so the poem is also commenting on figurative language itself: it declines the hyperbole of others.

Step 3, word. “I grant I never saw a goddess go; / My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.” The tone is flat and humorous. “Treads” is a heavy, plain verb; “on the ground” is almost comic in its obviousness. This is understatement used as a quiet joke at the expense of exaggerators, and it prepares the final turn: “And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare”.

Step 4, effect. The plain words make the final couplet more convincing. By refusing hyperbole, the speaker earns trust: he does not need false comparisons (“false compare”) to claim that his love is “as rare” as any. The perspective is that honest affection is stronger than flattering exaggeration.

A model sentence. Shakespeare’s speaker minimises his beloved’s glamour in plain phrases such as “treads on the ground”, so that the final claim of rare love gains weight because it comes without false comparison.

Testing a word against its alternatives

A reliable way to explain the function of a word is to swap it. The table below uses sentences written by Marlbridge about the same event.

Version	Key word	What changes
“The tenant walked out of the house.”	walked	Neutral; the reader supplies the feeling
“The tenant stalked out of the house.”	stalked	Anger, stiffness, a sense of being watched
“The tenant crept out of the house.”	crept	Fear or guilt; a wish not to be seen
“The tenant drifted out of the house.”	drifted	Detachment, no purpose, almost no weight

Each verb denotes movement on foot, but each carries a different connotation, and so a different attitude toward the tenant. When you meet an important word in a poem, ask which neighbouring word the poet could have used and what the poem would lose. Adverbs work the same way: “closed the door softly” and “closed the door carefully” suggest consideration in different degrees. Quoting a word and then contrasting it with an alternative is a precise way to show that the choice is meaningful.

Common misconceptions

• “Figurative means untrue.” Figurative language is a way of saying something true by comparison or exaggeration.
• “Literal readings are unimportant.” The literal meaning is where analysis starts; if you skip it, you may misread the figure.
• “Connotation is personal opinion.” Connotations are shared associations that the context supports; point to the words and the context.
• “Hyperbole always means insincerity.” It can express intense, sincere feeling, or be comic or ironic. Context decides.
• “Naming a device is enough.” “This is hyperbole” earns little unless you say what it does to the speaker’s attitude.
• “Adjectives are just description.” Descriptive words qualify and also shape how the reader responds to the thing described.

Where this leads

Topic 5.3 (study guide) turns to imagery, the sensory side of figurative language. Practise this topic with the practice questions, review the revision notes and tick off the checklist. Word choice returns in complex poems in Topic 8.2.