ESA Pedia: Personification

Hi fellas! This time, ESA FKIP Universitas Riau is thrilled to share another exciting piece of knowledge with you. For those of you who want to make your English more vivid and creative, we are here with Personification: Giving Life to the Lifeless. Stay tuned as we dive into this interesting topic from start to finish.

In the colorful world of language, personification stands out because it transforms ordinary objects, animals, or even abstract ideas into characters with human traits. While it may look like just a stylistic choice, understanding personification will help you express ideas more imaginatively and connect emotionally with your readers. In this blog, we’ll explore what personification is, why it’s such a powerful figure of speech, and how you can use it effectively in your own writing.

What Is the Personification

 

Personification is a figure of speech or figurative language that gives human qualities, emotions, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or abstract ideas. In other words, something non-human is described as having human abilities.

Simple examples:
“The wind whispered through the trees.”
“The stars winked at us.”

The term comes from Latin: persona (“mask, role”) + facere (“to make”) — literally “to make something act like a person.”

 Purpose of Personification 

  

• Enlivening language → Making descriptions more vivid, interesting, and less monotonous.
• Facilitating understanding → Helping readers grasp abstract concepts in a more concrete and tangible way.
• Creating emotional nuances → Providing a certain mood, feeling, or atmosphere in a text.
• Enriching literary works → Adding beauty, style, and imagination to stories, poems, or creative writing.

Why Use Personification 

  

• To make language more vivid and imaginative
• To help readers understand abstract concepts in a concrete way
• To create stronger emotional impact and atmosphere

Examples In Everyday Life 

 

 

Everyday conversation:

• “Time flies so fast.”
• “Fear knocked on the door.”

Advertising & Media:

• Animal mascots or objects that speak like humans.
• For example, “Walls ice cream that always smiles for you.”

Literature & Poetry:

• Emily Dickinson: “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me.”
• William Wordsworth: “The moon doth with delight look around her when the heavens are bare.”

Benefits In Writing 

 

 

• Makes stories more vivid and sparks the reader's imagination.
• It is a powerful rhetorical tool in speeches or persuasive writing.
• It adds aesthetic elements to poetry, novels, short stories, and even songs.

Tips for Using Personification 

 

 

•  Choose a relevant object, animal, or abstract idea.
• Give appropriate human traits or emotions (e.g., laughing, crying, angry, smiling).
• Don't overdo it—use just enough to remain effective.
•  Adapt to the mood of the text: happy, sad, mysterious, romantic, etc. 

Personification is a way to bring text to life by giving human traits to non-human things. It is useful for strengthening the imagination, making it easier to understand abstract concepts, and building an emotional bond between the reader and the writing. 

 

 Source:

• byjus.com 
• Merriam-Webst