Which one of the following is the figure of speech in the expression “Africa is on the move” ?

Correct — A, (a) Personification.

Personification is the figure of speech in which a thing that is not a person - an object, a place, an abstraction, a force of nature - is written about as though it were one. 'Africa is on the move' does exactly that. A continent cannot move; being on the move is something a person, an army or a crowd does. The sentence lends Africa an ability that belongs only to living, willing beings, and it does so for effect: it makes the whole continent read as a single figure that has risen and started walking. That is why the passage uses it as its opening line.

Test it against what the sentence is actually doing. It is not describing a physical fact, because the landmass is stationary. It is not stating an opposition, because there is nothing being contrasted. It is not saying one thing while meaning its opposite. It takes an inanimate subject and gives it a human action, which is the definition of personification and nothing else.

One refinement worth having, because option (c) is built on it. Personification and anthropomorphism are neighbours, and the ordinary distinction is between a figure of speech and a mode of representation. Personification is a momentary rhetorical move inside a sentence, and the reader is never asked to believe it: nobody thinks the continent has legs. Anthropomorphism gives a non-human thing a sustained human form or character that the audience is asked to accept within the work - a talking fox in a fable, a god pictured with a human body, an animal in a cartoon that wears clothes and holds a job. A single figurative clause in a news passage is the first, not the second.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)Irony — Irony is a gap between what is said and what is meant, or between what is expected and what occurs. It needs a second meaning underneath the surface one, and usually a reader who is expected to see through the surface. 'Africa is on the move' has no such gap: the passage means precisely what the sentence conveys, that large numbers of Africans are moving, and it spends the rest of the paragraph documenting it with figures. Nothing in the sentence signals distance between the writer and the words - no exaggeration for deflation, no reversal, no wink. Irony is a frequent option in figure-of-speech items because it is the term candidates are surest they know, and it is worth insisting that it requires a detectable double meaning before it is chosen.
• (c)Anthropomorphism — This is the option that separates a candidate who knows the term from one who knows the pair, and it is close enough to deserve a proper answer rather than a dismissal. Anthropomorphism does mean the attribution of human characteristics to something non-human, so at the level of a dictionary definition it overlaps with personification almost entirely. The two are distinguished by scope and by what is asked of the audience. Anthropomorphism confers a sustained human form, personality or agency that the work asks the reader to accept - the animals of the Panchatantra, a deity conceived in human shape. Personification is a local figure of speech: one clause, one borrowed human action, no belief required, and the literal sense never suspended. The item asks specifically for 'the figure of speech in the expression', and the figure of speech that names this move is personification; anthropomorphism belongs to the description of a whole representation rather than of a single expression.
• (d)Antithesis — Antithesis is the setting of two contrasting ideas against each other in a balanced construction - 'man proposes, God disposes', 'not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more'. It needs two limbs and an opposition between them. 'Africa is on the move' is a single clause of four words with no second limb and nothing to contrast: there is a subject and a predicate, and both point the same way. The option can be eliminated on the shape of the sentence alone, without deciding anything about its meaning, which makes it the cheapest of the three to strike out.

Figures of speech are classified by the move they make, and four of the commonest are easy to keep apart once each is reduced to its mechanism.

Personification gives human qualities or actions to something that is not human. The test is to ask whether the verb or adjective attached to the subject is one that only a living person could take: the wind whispers, the city never sleeps, opportunity knocks, Africa is on the move.

Irony sets what is said against what is meant. The test is whether a second, contrary meaning is available and intended, and whether the reader is being invited to see it.

Antithesis balances opposed ideas in parallel structure. The test is structural: two limbs, and an opposition between them.

Anthropomorphism is best kept as the sibling of personification rather than as a synonym. Where personification is a passing figure inside a sentence, anthropomorphism is a sustained representation - a god, an animal or an object given human form and character throughout a story, an image or a belief system.

One further note keeps this expression honest. 'Africa' here also stands in for the people of Africa, and substituting a whole for its inhabitants is metonymy. Metonymy is not among the four options, and the movement being described - a continent given a human action - is what the item is asking about, but seeing both devices at once is the sign of a reader who is looking at the sentence rather than at the option list.

Key facts

• Personification attributes human qualities or actions to something non-human; 'on the move' is an action available only to people or to bodies of people, and Africa is a landmass.
• Irony requires a gap between what is said and what is meant; the passage means its opening sentence literally in substance and supports it immediately with figures on migrants living outside the continent.
• Antithesis requires two balanced limbs in opposition, so it can be eliminated from a four-word single-clause sentence on structure alone, before meaning is considered.
• Anthropomorphism and personification overlap in definition and are separated by scope: anthropomorphism is a sustained human form or character asked to be accepted within a work, personification a local figure inside a sentence.
• The expression also contains metonymy - the continent standing for its people - which is not among the four options but is worth noticing, since a sentence can carry more than one device at once.

Common traps

• Choosing irony because the term is familiar; it requires a demonstrable second meaning, and this sentence has none.
• Treating anthropomorphism as an exact synonym of personification, when the item asks for the figure of speech in a single expression.
• Testing options against the passage's subject matter instead of against the sentence's structure; antithesis fails on structure alone.
• Missing that more than one device can be present - the sentence is also metonymic - and concluding that the identified figure must therefore be wrong.
• Assuming a figure of speech must be ornamental; here it does argumentative work, announcing the passage's thesis in its first four words.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following expressions is an example of personification ?

  • (a)The city stretched out its arms to the refugees
  • (b)He was as brave as a lion in the field
  • (c)The pen is mightier than the sword
  • (d)She was a little upset, to put it mildly

  Answer(a) The city stretched out its arms to the refugees - a city is given a human action. (b) is a simile marked by 'as ... as', (c) is metonymy, with pen and sword standing for writing and armed force, and (d) is understatement.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  'The village slept through the storm.' The figure of speech in this sentence is :

  • (a)Antithesis
  • (b)Personification
  • (c)Irony
  • (d)Hyperbole

  Answer(b) Personification - sleeping is an action of living beings, and it is attributed here to a village. There is no opposition of limbs for antithesis, no second meaning for irony, and no exaggeration for effect of the kind hyperbole requires.