【正确答案】The first meaning for a word that a dictionary definition gives is usually its LITERAL meaning. The literal meaning of the word tree, of example, is "a large plant". However, once we start talking about a tree in the context of a family tree for example, it is no longer a literal tree we are talking about, but a FIGURATIVE one.
The literal use of the word tree refers to an organism which has bark, branches and leaves. A family tree shares some of these qualities—graghically, a plan of a family and a representation of a tree can look similar, and in a way they are both a process of organic growth, so we use the same term for both. But when we use the term for a plant it is a literal usage and when we use the term to describe our ancestry, it is a figurative usage.
Another word for the figurative use of language is TROPE, which refers to language used in a figurative way for a rhetorical purpose. For example,
Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your ears ...
This is from Mark Antony' s speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Here lend me your ears is a trope, used figuratively for rhetorical ends in order to make more impact than a literal variation such as listen to me for a moment. We do not interpret the line literally as a wish to borrow the flesh- and-blood ears of the audience, but as a figurative request for attention. Tropes occur frequently in language use and there are many different forms of tropes.
1)Simile
A SIMILE is way of comparing one thing with another, of explaining what one thing is like by showing how it is similar to another thing, and it explicitly signals itself in a text, with the words as or like. The phrase as cold as ice is a common simile; the concept of coldness is explained in terms of an actual concrete object. The word as signals that the trope is a simile.
2)Metaphor
The above process of transferring qualities from one thing to another is fundamentally how another type of trope, metaphor, works too. There is a formal difference however, in that the words like or as do not appear. A METAPHOR, like a simile, also makes a comparison between two unlike elements; but unlike a simile, this comparison is implied rather than stated.
3)Metonymy
Like metaphor, metonymy is also a figurative use of language. As metaphor means the transport of ideas in Greek, METONYMY means a change of name. For example, in the following lines by J. Shirley, metonymy is used four times:
a)There is no amour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings;
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked Scythe and Spade.
Here Sceptre and Crown represent kings and queens, while Scythe and Spade represent ordinary peasants and workers.
4)Synecdoche
A further kind of figurative language is SYNECDOCHE, which is usually classed as a type of metonymy. Synecdoche refers to using the name of part of an object to talk about the whole thing, and vice versa. For example, hands in They were short of hands at harvest time means workers, labourers or helpers.
The figurative use of language has the effect of making the concepts under discussion tamer, more domestic, more acceptable. Readers can be presented with a picture of the world form which much of the uncertainty, the fuzziness, the ambiguity has been wiped out. And some linguists argue that much of our perception of the world and ourselves is shaded by figurative uses of language.

【答案解析】[解析] 本题着重考查原语言和比喻语言的主要区别。原语言一般是词典所给出的一个词的第一个意思。为了修辞的目的通过比喻的途径使用语言所表达的意义。