Go Figure: Workshop on Figurative Language
London, June 2013
Hyperbole and Other Figures*
Catherine Wearing
Wellesley College
The question at issue: how does hyperbole work? Is it like metaphor or like irony?
I.
Preliminaries
1 Some observations about hyperbole
(1) My piece of cake is tiny. (said by a 10-year old after looking at the slice of cake on his
older sister’s plate)
(2) It’s impossible. (said by a first-year undergraduate about a challenging logic problem)
(3) There were a million people ahead of me in the queue. (said after standing in a line that
stretched about 40 feet)
(4) Sara’s bedroom was the size of Cornwall. (said while describing Sara’s new living
arrangements; thanks to Deirdre Wilson for this example)
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Exaggeration
Adjustment along a scale
Flexibility of expression
Flexibility in combination:
(5) hyperbolic metaphor: ‘he’s a devil’
(6) hyperbolic simile: ‘he’s as virtuous as a saint’
(7) hyperbole and irony: ‘what glorious weather’ (as it drizzles)
(8) hyperbole and idiom: ‘she’s as dull as ditchwater’ [also a simile]
2 The difference between metaphor and irony
A diverse collection of authors agree that metaphor and irony are importantly different: e.g.
relevance theorists, Josef Stern, Sam Guttenplan, Robert Fogelin
What’s in common: the interpretation of metaphor centrally involves adjusting the
interpretation of (some part of) the uttered sentence itself, while the interpretation of irony
involves doing something with the proposition literally expressed by the uttered sentence
II.
Hyperbole and irony (considered separately)
Deirdre Wilson: hyperbole “is not inherently ironical”
(9) Well done. (said after someone clumsily drops and breaks something valuable)
(10) What lovely weather. (said while it’s raining hard)
3 characteristic features of irony:
a. it involves the expression of an attitude of mockery, scorn, or contempt
b. it is (optionally) accompanied by a characteristic tone of voice
c. it exhibits a ‘normative bias’
*
This talk is based on ongoing work with Robyn Carston (UCL/CSMN) and is supported by a grant from the
Leverhulme Trust.
Hyperbole does not exhibit any of these features. However, it seems to exhibit ‘counterparts’
of the first two:
*a. it conveys an evaluation
(11) That was the best day ever. – It was much better even than I had expected it to be.
(12) I’ll be marking essays forever. – My marking is going to take much longer than I would
like.
In each case, the paraphrase doesn’t merely capture a quantity or degree which is more factually
accurate than the encoded quantity; it also expresses an element of evaluation. This, I suggest, is
part of the point of speaking hyperbolically. Contrast the hyperbolic (11) and (12) in this respect
with the approximation (13):
(13) ‘I live in Boston’
Unlike irony’s characteristic attitude, which is uniformly negative, the evaluation conveyed by
a hyperbole may as easily be positive as negative. And it is an evaluation of the state of affairs
at issue, not an attitude towards the thought expressed by the utterance.
(14) You’re the best friend a person could ever wish for.
(15) That dessert was a glorious ending to an unbelievably good meal.
*b. it has an (optional) characteristic tone of voice
Roughly, it is emphatic, with its pitch varying according to the sort of evaluation the
speaker is aiming to convey.
III.
Hyperbole and metaphor (taken together)
1 Stern’s ‘conceptual ordering test’ applied to (metaphor + irony) combinations
Stern’s question: what is the ‘logical order of operation’?
Stern’s answer: the ironic interpretation is conditioned on the metaphorical one
(16) What delicate lacework.
2 Applying the test to (metaphor + hyperbole) combinations
(17) “I’ve had exactly the same complaint from anthropology on Rayon Street. They say
the noise there is intolerable and that in the summer it’s a question of fry and be audible or
open your windows and never hear a word.” (from the London Lund Corpus, cited in
Norrick 2004)
(18) On the night in 1997 when Tony Blair's Labour party first won an election (with a big
majority against the Tories who had governed for the previous 18 odd years):
"A landslide?" said Professor Tony King witheringly on Election 97 (BBC1). "It is an
asteroid hitting the planet and destroying practically all life on earth." (thanks to Robyn
Carston for this example)
Stern’s question: what is the ‘logical order of operation’ here?
My answer: it’s much less clear than in the M+I case (my intuitions point weakly in the
same general direction, i.e. hyperbole is conditioned on metaphor, if anything)
3 A second argument for grouping metaphor and hyperbole together
Sperber and Wilson’s claim: Metaphor and hyperbole are essentially continuous with one
another. This claim is supported by the existence of ‘hard-to-classify’ cases:
(19) You’re a saint. // You’re an angel.
(20) You’re a giant.
Do these examples involve a qualitative shift in meaning or a quantitative one?
(21) The fog came on little cat feet.
Why not both? (There are hyperbolic similes, but hyperbole and simile are not continuous:)
(22) He’s as charismatic as a traffic cone.
(23) His anger radiated like a nuclear explosion.
IV.
Hyperbole and irony (taken together)
(24) I was on the edge of my seat. (said after a boring lecture)
(25) That was absolutely brilliant. (said about a fairly poor performance)
(26) What amazing luck I’m having today. (said after someone leaves her umbrella behind
after a talk, just misses her train and then hears that there will be a 20 minute delay before
the next one, which means that she will then be late for dinner)
Stern’s question: what is the ‘logical order of operation’ here?
My answer: If hyperbole is of a piece with metaphor, then we might expect the same sorts
of (strong) intuitions that we get when we consider metaphor and irony together. But I
don’t have these intuitions; on the contrary, I have a strong intuition that the object of
the ironical attitude is the proposition literally expressed in each of (24) – (26). At the
same time, the exaggeration stretches from what is factually accurate to the expressed
description.
V.
Answering the opening question
Taken overall, hyperbole seems to have some affinities with irony and yet also some
significant differences from it. At the same time, it seems to have some affinities with
metaphor and again some differences. Perhaps the correct answer, then, is that hyperbole
belongs with neither of these other figures.
Hyperbole as an ‘effect’? An effect that can be achieved by means of an echoic use or the
construction of an ac hoc concept, by exaggerating what needs to be done in that sort of
case. In all cases, one result of that exaggeration is the communication of an evaluation of
the state of affairs at issue.
1. But then what’s going on with ‘pure’ hyperboles?
2. And doesn’t this make every irony hyperbolic?