Identification is not analysis: how to write about a language device so it earns marks

Many students can find language devices. They can point to a simile, a metaphor or a burst of alliteration, and they can name them correctly. The trouble is that many stop there. Identification on its own earns no marks. What examiners reward is analysis: what the device does to the reader, and why the writer chose it for this particular text.

This guide uses one extract to show the difference. It comes from a novel narrated by an old grandfather clock, sold by its owner in Vienna and about to be installed in the hallway of a new home. A woman called Claire unpacks it, talks to it gently and sets it to the right time, while the clock remembers the workshop where it was made.

The problem with identification

Here is a typical identification sentence:

The writer uses a metaphor, “a locked drawer inside”.

Nothing in it is wrong. The device is named correctly and the quotation proves it is there. But the sentence only shows that you recognised a metaphor. It says nothing about meaning, the reader or the writer’s choices, so it cannot earn credit as analysis.

Now compare it with this:

The metaphor “a locked drawer inside” makes the reader sense that the clock’s memories of Vienna are kept safe yet frustratingly out of reach, prompting them to reflect on how the past shapes identity and a sense of home.

The second version does four things, in a clear order:

1. It names the device.
2. It quotes it briefly, in five words or fewer.
3. It states the specific reaction the reader has.
4. It links that reaction to the text’s purpose.

Step three is the one students most often skip. If you jump straight from the quotation to “this shows the writer’s purpose”, the link feels loose and unproven. When you describe what the reader actually feels or notices first, the purpose follows naturally and convincingly.

Start with purpose

You cannot link a device to purpose until you know what the text is trying to do. Before you analyse a single device, decide what the extract wants to do to its reader. This extract has three clear purposes:

Evoke: it stirs empathy for an impossible narrator, so the reader feels the clock’s displacement and vulnerability rather than simply understanding it.

Reflect: it prompts the reader to pause on memory, identity and home, making familiar themes feel newly considered.

Reassure: it closes on comfort and gentleness, suggesting that change and a new sense of belonging can be absorbed rather than experienced only as loss.

With these three purposes in mind, each device has somewhere to go.

Device by device

Personification. The whole extract depends on it. The clock has “my shoulders”, “my glass face” and hands that Claire sets. Because the reader is given a body to imagine, they begin to feel for the clock as they would for a person being moved from one home to another. That reaction is what makes the narrator’s loss believable, so personification carries the purpose of evoking empathy.

Simile. The clockmaker’s hands move “like a pianist testing” a new instrument. The reader pictures careful, skilled hands and senses the tenderness of the clock’s beginnings. The comparison makes them feel the warmth of the workshop and reflect on how lovingly the clock was made. Other similes work the same way: floorboards worn “smooth as river stone” suggest years of use, and the first customer winds the key with the “same care as a mother”, linking the clock’s beginnings to the instinctive tenderness of early life.

Metaphor. Vienna is “a locked drawer inside” the clock. As shown above, the reader senses memories that are kept but cannot be fully reached. This pushes them to reflect on how the past stays with us even when it is out of reach.

Sibilance and alliteration. The hissing sounds of “sawdust settling” slow the reader down and create a soft, hushed atmosphere, so the memory feels peaceful rather than painful. The alliteration in “calloused, careful hands” gives the clockmaker’s touch a gentle, steady rhythm. Both devices draw the reader into the scene emotionally while keeping the tone calm and reassuring.

Onomatopoeia. Near the end, Claire opens the clock’s face “with a soft click”, and the clock feels “the tick settle” into a new rhythm. The reader hears the small, everyday sounds of a clock coming back to life. These sounds mark the turning point of the extract: the moment the clock begins to accept its new home. They reassure the reader that change can be absorbed quietly.

Idiom. Claire tells the clock it will be “right as rain” in its new spot. The phrase is homely and familiar, and the reader hears her kindness in it. Its ordinary, comforting tone reassures both the clock and the reader that the move will turn out well.

Allusion. The clock feels it has woken “like Rip Van Winkle”, the character in Washington Irving’s short story who sleeps for twenty years and wakes to a changed world. Readers who recognise the story feel the clock’s confusion at a world that has moved on without it. The allusion stirs sympathy and invites reflection on time and change.

The flagship point

For your strongest point, look for a quotation that carries more than one device. The clock says it has learned that “silence is never silent”. This is a paradox: the word “never” denies silence its own defining quality, so the statement seems to contradict itself. It is also polyptoton, because the same root returns in a different grammatical form, first as a noun and then as an adjective. The repetition holds the reader on the idea and makes them stop to work it out. Once they do, they realise that the clock hears memory in the quiet. This line works as the extract’s central idea, and it prompts the reader to reflect more than any other. Explaining two devices on one four-word quotation shows real control.

Keep it in the language section

Idiom, allusion, paradox, alliteration and sibilance are all language features, because their effect comes from word choice and sound. Structural features are about organisation: paragraphing, narrative order, shifts in focus and pacing. Keep the two apart in your answer so that each section stays focused.

Depth over breadth

You do not need every device in the extract. A few well-chosen devices, each analysed in full, will usually outscore a long list of devices that are only named. Choose the ones that do the most work for the text’s purpose, keep your quotations short, and spend your words on the reader’s reaction and the writer’s intention. That is where the marks are.