Synaesthesia (rhetorical device)

For literary depictions of the neurological condition, see Synesthesia in literature.

Synaesthesia is a rhetorical device or figure of speech where one sense is described in terms of another.^[1] This may often take the form of a simile.^[2] One can distinguish the literary joining of terms derived from the vocabularies of sensory domains from synaesthesia as a neuropsychological phenomenon.^[3]

Panchronistic tendencies

It has been suggested that, in the tradition of Romantic poetry, the sensory transfer consisting in the synaesthesic metaphor tends to be from a lower (less differentiated) sense to a higher sense. In this respect, the sequence of senses from low to high is generally taken to be touch, taste, smell, sound, then sight.^[4] This observation was named a panchronistic tendency by Stephen Ullmann since he saw the lowest levels of sense having the poorest vocabulary.^[4] Upwards transfers are thought to have strong emotional effects, but downwards transfers generally witty effects.^[3]

Rhetorical synaesthesia as simile

Examples of synaesthesic simile:

• "his words cut the air like a dagger" (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)^[2]
• "thy voice is like wine to me" (Oscar Wilde, Salome)^[2]

Rhetorical synaesthesia as transmodal modification

When a modifier which would normally apply to one sense is used collocating a noun evocative of another sense, this is known as transmodal modification.^[2] Examples include:

• "mauve Hungarian music" (Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband)^[2]

Rhetorical synaesthesia as transmodal predication

When a noun evoking one sense is linked with a predicate evoking another, this is known as transmodal predication.^[2] Examples include:

• "My nostrils see her breath burn like a bush." (Dylan Thomas, When all my Five and Country Senses See)^[2]
• "the silence that dwells in the forest is not so black" (Oscar Wilde, Salome)^[2]

Synaesthetic polysemy

When a linkage of two senses depends upon a pun, this is known as synaesthetic polysemy.^[2] Examples include:

"the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music"

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant^[2]

References

1. Forsyth, Mark. The Elements of Eloquence. p. 32.
2. Anderson, Earl R. (1998). A Grammar of Iconism. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 199.
3. Tsur, Reuven (Spring 2007). "Issues in Literary Synaesthesia". Style. 41 (1): 30–52.
4. Ullmann, Stephen (1957). The Principles of Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.