Reflection

After I have finished the English Semantics course which was instructed by Mrs. Anh
Nguyet, now I understand the importance of this subject. The goal of this subject is to
discover the meaning of words and sentences in language, and to distinguish the meaning
of two synonyms. In all of the sections that we have learnt, I particularly have an interest
in the “Word meaning” section, especially the figures of speech part. In this lesson, we
find out about the most frequently used terms of figures of speech in English, those are
“Simile, metaphor, personification, metonymy, hyperbole, onomatopoeia”. I find this
section is really interesting and essential in writing, it elevates the beauty of writing. We
can see that in many form of writing, people use figures of speech effectively to describe
their intent and enhance their creation. They literally bring words to life, this make our
experience of reading more pleasurable. Not only in writing, figures of speech also
important in daily communication. For example, a person said to you that “I haven’t seen
you for ages. I miss dreadfully!). In this statement, that person use figures of speech
particularly hyperbole to express his/her expressions, emotions, how much he/she miss
you when he/she hasn’t seen you for a long time.
As you can see, figures of speech are widely used in every types of language expression.
Even in the song that you love and listen to it every day, the lyrics contains figure of
speech. Personally, there is a song that stuck in my head recently and I would like to use
this song to analyze figures of speech in the lyrics of the song. This song called “Die for
you” by Joji – one of my favorite artist. “Die for you” is a sad song about Joji falling out
of love from a past relationship. And we will explore the song’s message through the
lyrics, through the way Joji using words.
“I heard that you're happy without me
And I hope it's true (I hope, I hope it's true)
It kills me a little, that's okay
'Cause I'd die for you
You know I'd still die for you”
This lyrics is a use of hyperbole (“It kills me a little”), it illustrates the pain that he
suffered from the breakup. He feels hard to accept the fact that the girl he once loved is
still fine although he isn’t part of her life anymore. However, he still loves her so much
that he put the girl’s happiness above all and even would die for her.
“I hope you’re getting everything you needed
Found the puzzle piece and feel completed”
Joji uses the metaphor “the puzzle piece” may be to express his thought about the reason
why they broke up. He thinks the girl found her happiness and it was not him.
In summary, this reflection has described my thought about English semantics
specifically the figures of speech after learning it from Mrs.Nguyet’s class and from the
English semantics book written by To Minh Thanh. I have shown how important of
figures of speech and the contribution of them to all form of language through an
example of hyperbole in daily speech. And finally, I also analyzed the lyrics of a song
that containing some components of figures of speech.