Do we ever make a molehill out of a mountain?: antithetical extremes in the expression of hyperbole

Abstract

This paper focuses on hyperbole, a long neglected form of non-literal language despite its pervasiveness in everyday speech. It addresses the production process of exaggeration, since a crucial limitation in figurative language theories is the production and usage of figures of speech, probably due to the intensive research effort on their comprehension. The aim is to examine antithetical postures in the expression of hyperbole: amplification (auxesis) vs. diminution (meiosis). In analysing whether speakers tend to magnify or minimize reality we expect to reach a better understanding of the nature and use of this figure in discourse. In order to analyse and classify hyperbolic items, a corpus of naturally-occurring conversations extracted from the British National Corpus was examined. Although the results suggest a clear preference for overstatement, this duality should not be overlooked in definitions of hyperbole, as has traditionally been done with meiosis in the literature on the subject. Common patterns for the expression of auxesis and meiosis are discussed via semantic fields. Finally, the constrained nature of meiosis in terms of linguistic choices and degree of deflation may help explain why speakers tend to upscale rather than downscale reality. Keywords: figurative language, hyperbole, auxesis, meiosis, corpus analysis.