A subjective description captures the subject's way of thinking and feeling.
A description is an enumeration of the traits or characteristics of something or someone, developed through language. According to its properties, the description can be qualified in different ways.
A subjective description is called one in which the subjectivity of the individual describing is explicit. It should be remembered that the subjective is something related to the subject's way of feeling or thinking : that is, it is not linked to the object itself.
A subjective description, therefore, conveys the person's feelings and thoughts , unlike what happens with an objective description (which tries to get as close as possible to reality, leaving aside opinions and personal considerations).
Example of subjective description
Suppose that a young man, when describing the house he has just bought, comments to his friends: “It is a beautiful house, fit for a king. Its dimensions are so large that an elephant would feel comfortable in it. And its design is typical of a first-class artist.” As can be seen, the boy makes a subjective description since he uses qualifying adjectives and presents sensations that may or may not be shared.
Another person, on the other hand, could choose to make an objective description: “It is a house with an area of 120 square meters, with a mosaic floor, brick walls and a tile roof.” In this case, there is no subjectivity in the description, but only objective data appears.
Subjective description usually uses literary figures.
Use of poetic language and rhetorical devices
It should be noted that, when the subjective description uses poetic language or rhetorical devices , it can also result in a literary description : “There was a woman whose emerald eyes pierced the soul, with a magical smile that displayed countless perfect pearls and hair that seemed to be made of rays of the sun.”
Literary figures , therefore, usually appear in this type of descriptions, and among them are metaphor, comparison and hyperbole . The intention of including them is to ensure that the text enjoys a greater degree of beauty, but also a certain rhythm, something that can give it a lot of personality.
Scope of subjective description
Given that each individual, of all the species on the planet, perceives reality in a particular way that is as valid as that of any other, and that the description is nothing more than a drawing with words of said reality, we could say that not even the Objective description absolutely lacks subjectivity. No matter how much we rely on units of measurement to talk about the dimensions of a house or even the body mass of a given object, these units were created by humans, arbitrarily, and someone could consider them imprecise or invalid.
What are the living beings and things around us like? Do we know what our friends, our home, ourselves are like? Of course it is, just as everyone else knows it, although probably the description that each one gives is different. When someone makes a subjective description, they make it very clear that their priority is not the precision of the forms or the questions of physics, but their point of view and their emotions .
Just as the object of the subjective description loses importance compared to the sender's intentions to express their own feelings, it is important that the receiver is appropriate. In this case, it should be someone who does not expect a list of physical and chemical properties, which can be measured using scientific tools, but rather a series of personal opinions that he may or may not share, but that will give him a point of view. only. It is also essential to use language that the other party can understand, and this applies to any type of description.