Applications of Rhetorical Figures (Badih) in Persian and English Languages: A Comparative Study

In spite of similarities between Iranian-Islamic rhetoric and English-European rhetoric, figures of speech, figures of expression and semantics have been the focus of the former, while the latter includes accuracy. Also, Iranian-Islamic rhetoric focuses on written rhetoric, whereases spoken rhetoric is the focus of English-European rhetoric. A comparative study of rhetoric in Persian and English, especially in the classification of figures of aesthetics, which is the main focus of this study, helps researchers analyze the aesthetic aspects of speech and enriches our knowledge of rhetoric in linguistics. This research tries to address such questions as how to classify rhetoric in Persian and English, the similarities and differences in the rhetoric classification and rhetorical aesthetics of these two languages. It follows a mixed-methods approach and the data are collected through a library survey. The findings suggest that the comparison of figures of speech in English and Persian should be done in light of semantics and figures of expression. The science of figures of speech in Persian is an independent field of study and is more extensive than English rhetoric, which is not understood as an independent field of study. Figures of speech in English are at times intertwined with figures of expression and meaning. The border of figures of speech in Persian is more distinctive than that of English.