est autem in usu vulgo quoque et inter ineruditos et apud rusticos, videlicet quia natura est omnibus augendi res vel minuendi cupiditas insita nec quisquam vero contentus est: sed ignoscitur, quia non adfirmamus.
[Hyperbole is commonly used even by ignorant people and peasants, which is understandable, as all people are by nature inclined to magnify or to minimise things and nobody is content to stick to what is really the case. We tolerate this habit, because we are not really asserting facts. – my translation, CC]
(Quintilian VIII, 6, 75)
Hyperbole as a term has a long tradition; in the sense of ‘exaggeration’ it was already used in classical Greece. Roman rhetoricians, such as Quintilian, deal with the figure of overstatement in their handbooks and from there it has found its way into the European rhetorical tradition. It is found used in diverse sources; the Encyclopædia Britannica mentions love poetry, sagas, tall tales, classical mythology, political rhetoric and advertising as texts containing hyperbole, illustrating the great range of the phenomenon regarding both time and genre. Furthermore, hyperbole is not only an arcane rhetorical figure, but rather, similar to metaphor, it is a common feature of everyday language use (Leech 1983: 146f.). Just like metaphor, it may be wired in the cognitive structuring of our experience: the concept of size, to which exaggeration must primarily be connected, is a very basic and salient one. Like metaphor or in conjunction with it, hyperbole thus deals not simply with the ‘description’ of experience, but with the understanding and, especially, the evaluation of it, i.e., the subjective importance to oneself, and it thus has an important affective component. Remarks can already be found in Quintilian (VIII, 6, 75) that it was a common urge of humans to magnify things and not to be satisfied with (the description of) things as they really are (cf. the quote at the beginning of this chapter). Thus, the presence of fairly common, but largely unobtrusive instances of hyperbole in everyday language should not really come as a surprise. In simple sentences like they’re never at home it is a universal feature (transcending individual language communities and languages) and probably stays well below the threshold of stylistic consciousness. It is often only the (perceived) overuse or the novelty of an instance of hyperbole that strikes us as extraordinary.
The present study seeks first of all to trace this assumed ‘commonness’ of hyperbole in everyday spontaneous spoken language. How much exaggeration is actually used by people in conversation? What forms do the hyperbolic expressions employed take? And for what purposes and functions are they used? Are, perhaps, different groups of people marked by their distinctive use of hyperbole? Less spontaneous and more formal types of language will also be investigated, and there the rhetorical tradition of hyperbole will play a role. The persuasive or even manipulative aspect of hyperbole may come to the fore in public speeches and debates. Newspapers might make use of its potential for ‘sensationalisation’. Literature and television might exploit hyperbolic means for their emotional appeal or for their comic possibilities. While the former two aspects highlight a potentially negative use and consequent disapproval of hyperbole, the latter two show the light or positive side of it. If hyperbole is indeed a common feature, as hypothesised above, then the historical dimension is also of interest, e.g., the questions of how long frequent hyperbolic expressions can maintain their exaggeration potential or how they contribute to semantic change.
The questions just raised make it evident that this can only be an empirical study, making use of a wide range of authentic data. Existing corpora of various regional and functional varieties of English are an obvious source of data. However, the phenomenon of hyperbole is not one that lends itself easily to a classical corpus linguistic approach as automatic searching requires a list of search terms. With this approach one tends only to find what one already knows or suspects to be the case anyway. Nevertheless, various corpora will be used, in part or whole, namely the British National Corpus (BNC), especially though not exclusively its spoken component, the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBC), as well as various diachronic corpora for the historical aspect, e.g., the Helsinki Corpus (HC), the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC), the Corpus of English Dialogues (CED) and the Corpus of Nineteenth-century English (CONCE). The approach taken is a mix of manual and automatic sampling: the first instalment of the SBC and a 314,725 word-subcorpus of the BNC spoken part (demographic section) have been read through to find all occurring instances of hyperbole, while some items identified in this way were then subjected to more comprehensive corpus searches. Where appropriate and viable, frequency investigations have been carried out, but on the whole the emphasis will be on the qualitative analysis of the data. In addition to corpora, the following sources were used to enable a more comprehensive treatment of hyperbole (cf. complete list in the appendices): a collection of British newspapers (print versions), speeches hosted on the Labour and Tory party websites, various novels, the works of Monty Python and TV series such as Ally McBeal and Coupling. This was supplemented by accidentally overheard examples from real conversations and from TV/radio programmes, including the odd German one.
The book is structured in the following way: Chapter 2 ‘The characteristics of hyperbole’ provides a definition of hyperbole on which the data collection is based. The connection to intensification and emphasis will be discussed as well as semantic aspects touching on hyperbole, such as the semantics–encyclopedia interface, vagueness, emotive meaning and the role of polysemy. Chapter 3 presents an inventory of possible formal realisations of hyperbolic expressions and discusses special cases such as repetitions and superlatives. Chapter 4 deals with hyperbole in everyday language. It concentrates on the functions of hyperbole, in particular its role for the speaker’s emotional expression and self-presentation, and also on the sociolinguistic implications of hyperbole usage. Chapter 5 focuses on the hearer and on the interactive process by treating the comprehension of hyperbole, hearer reactions and matters of politeness. The historical aspect will be followed up in Chapter 6, which starts with a general discussion of conventionalisation in language and then proceeds to the discussion of subjectification in semantic change based on selected case studies of historical development. In Chapter 7 the rhetorical tradition of hyperbole will be taken up briefly, followed by a more detailed discussion of the role of overstatement in persuasive, humorous and literary discourse.