A Study of Figurative Language Used in The Guardian and The Washington Post Online Newspapers

The main objective of this study is to identify the types of figurative language used by journalists in The Guardian and The Washington Post online newspapers using the theory of figurative language proposed by Leech (1969). This study also investigates how those types of figurative language fit in with the context of sentences by considering the purposes of each figurative language. This study employs qualitative design as the research design. Content analysis is applied to obtain the data in which the writer is the key instrument of the study. Then, interactive data analysis is applied to analyze and explain the data. The data are taken from word, phrases and sentences in The Guardian and The Washington Post. A total of ten news articles are selected—five articles from each newspapers. Furthermore, 26 data are found in terms of types of figurative language including synecdoche (4 data), metaphor (9 data), metonymy (6 data), simile (1 data), symbolism (1 data) and hyperbole (5 data). Regarding the purpose of figurative language, the purpose of synecdoche is to give a deeper meaning of a common idea to be more vivid. The purposes of metaphor in newspapers are to describe the idea into a greater extent and to make the abstract comparison of metaphor more concrete. The use of simile is to communicate the idea efficiently and to make the idea more abstract and unreal. The purpose of metonymy is to conceptualize one thing by means its relations to something else. The purpose of symbolism is to modify the word more forceful. Hyperbole aims to make the idea is impossible and uncertain to be perceived and to create ironic, serious and dramatic effects.