Figuratively Speaking

I've been writing about how to make any kind of writing more literary.  My student posed a question I'd never heard before, one which seemed like it could lead to some interesting discoveries for writers. He pondered the comparison and contrast between the similar concepts of simile, metaphor, hypocatastasis, pataphor, anthropomorphizing, and ideasthesia.  I figured these terms wouldn't be hard to differentiate, but it turns out there's a reason people struggle with these terms.  They're not your garden-variety kinds of words.  

Some of these terms are commonly understood.  Most people know a simile is the comparison of one thing to another, pointing to a resemblance between two things.  "That guy's like a baby, the way he uses his hands to eat and throws a temper tantrum every five minutes."  Most students who have spent some time in an English class can tell you a metaphor ties image with thing closer together, representing one thing by another, basically like a simile without the word "like."  "That guy's such a baby."  I had to do research for the third one, hypocatastasis.  I didn't even know there WAS a third level to this.  Apparently, it's not even in some copies of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Hypocatastasis, as it turns out, ties these things even CLOSER together by simply implying one with the other.  "Baby!" (Spoken to the guy.)  I can imagine using all of these techniques in writing.  

Pataphor, meanwhile, is a metaphor that is fairly all-encompassing.  It is two steps removed from non-metaphoric language.  Here is an example given on pataphor.com: 

Non-figurative     -Tom and Alice stood side by side in the lunch line.

Metaphor    -Tom and Alice stood side by side in the lunch line, two pieces on a chessboard.

Pataphor     -Tom took a step closer to Alice and made a date for Friday night, checkmating. Rudy        was furious at losing to Margaret so easily and dumped the board on the rose-colored      quilt, stomping downstairs.

      (The pataphor has created a world where the chessboard exists, including the                        characters who live in that world, entirely abandoning the original context.) 

Pataphor is described as "an extended metaphor...which occurs when a lizard's tail grows so long it breaks off and grows a new lizard."  Basically, it's a comparison that creates a new world wherein the metaphor becomes almost a new reality.  

Anthropomorphism/personification is simply a kind of metaphor in which an object or animal is ascribed human-like traits as in "her painting spoke to my heart."  Obviously, a painting doesn't literally speak, and hearts don't have ears.  However, such a personification may make the painting seem more powerful.  

These concepts were easy compared to the next one.  I had to research multiple sources to even comprehend the definition.  Ideasthesia is not necessarily a method of creating imagery but the philosophical concept that experiences evoke visceral responses in the human mind.  Red evokes anger and passion.  Blue evokes emotional or physical coldness.  It's more a response to a stimulus than a way of writing.  This is more like metaphor or simile in action.  If you understand how this works, how the human mind processes a stimulus, you may be able to create a more effective and unique metaphor, one that evokes the same response the actual thing does.

Figurative language can make a piece more powerful.  It's one thing to say that something happened.  It's yet another to turn a simple event into a visceral and emotionally-charged moment through language.  Find a straight-forward piece of writing or simply WRITE a scene in which someone makes a sandwich or plays volleyball.  Now, try to include each kind of figurative language in turn.  Advanced challenge: try employing all of these forms of figurative language in one paragraph.  Now, use these in your writing to make them more meaningful and literary.