Which figure of speech is used in this text?
After spending weeks in New York City, Valeria was a bit unnerved by the deafening silence of her small hometown.

 - euphemism
 - oxymoron
The text uses an oxymoron, a joining of two seemingly contradictory terms.
Deafening silence is a contradiction, because deafening describes something extremely loud, and silence is the absence of sound.