Contents
1
Introduction to figurative language
2 Focus on
hyperbole: ubiquity of exaggeration in discourse
2.1 Previous
research on hyperbole
3 Joint
activity view of discourse
The intensive focus on the reception process of figures of
speech, in terms of the psychological processes operated on their
understanding, explains that nowadays a crucial limitation in figurative
language theories is the production process of non-literal forms, as joint
activities between speaker and hearer. Since the object of study has
traditionally been the figurative sentence, either in isolation or in the
context of an artificially constructed text, it is not surprising that the
collaborative nature of figures has been overlooked. This paper focuses on
hyperbole, a long neglected trope, despite its pervasive frequency of
occurrence and co-occurrence with other tropes in everyday speech. It attempts
to explore, from a conversation and discourse analysis framework, the ways in
which hyperbole is used in interaction, paying special attention to listeners’
responses, since any full account of hyperbole, like any other act of
linguistic creativity, must refer to its interactive dimension. With this aim,
a set of naturally-occurring conversations, chosen at random from the BNC, were
analysed, and the occurrences of hyperbolic items identified. The results
suggest that hyperboles need to be viewed interactively, by including
listeners’ responses and further contributions to the unfolding act, rather
than being studied as single, creative acts by the speaker alone. Finally, the
data also shows that hyperbole might be classified as a low-risk figure, since
the chances of misunderstanding are low.
Although figures of speech have a long history of study
within the general framework of rhetoric, for centuries one of the pillars of
language study, contemporary rhetoric has, nevertheless, tended to
underestimate the importance of figures “with the surprising and humbling
result that the study of figure, one of the oldest bodies of knowledge in the
human sciences, remains in our age still in its infancy” (Turner 1998: 83). In
the last twenty years, there has been a renewed interest in figurative
language, especially in cognitive psychology, but with a few exceptions, most
of this interest has been directed at explaining how figures of speech are
comprehended, given their non-literal nature.
Since the literature on the subject has almost invariably
focused on the psychological processes operated on understanding, it is not
surprising that nowadays a crucial limitation in figurative language theories
is the production process of non-literal language, as a joint activity between
addresser and addressee. Up to date, figures of speech have been largely
regarded as acts by the speaker alone, thus overlooking listeners’ responses to
figuration. In this sense, it is worth highlighting that although the reception
process, in terms of understanding, has been widely studied, hearers’ verbal
reactions to figurative language have been almost systematically neglected.
Only in the last few years has this interactive or “joint activity view of
discourse” (Clark 1994: 986) been applied to figurative language theories. The
scant literature, however, has mainly concentrated on metaphor and irony, often
considered the master tropes, and to a lesser extent, on idioms, while the
study of other figures has been set aside. This is certainly the case of
hyperbole, a long neglected trope despite its pervasive frequency of occurrence
in everyday speech.
A major limitation in previous research is perhaps that there
has been little systematic investigation into the use of figures in naturally
occurring dialogue. Rhetorical scholars have often listed striking examples
from literary writers, especially poets, to illustrate figures. On the other
hand, the bulk of psycholinguistic research makes use of artificial texts as
stimulus materials. In short, it appears that across all fields of research,
figures have almost invariably been abstracted from any actual interactive
setting. Since the object of study has traditionally been the figurative
sentence, either in isolation or in the context of an artificially constructed
text, it is not surprising that the collaborative nature of figures has been
overlooked.
This paper aims to explore, from a conversation and discourse
analysis framework, the ways in which hyperbole is used in interaction, paying
special attention to the reception process, in terms of listeners’ reactions to
overstatement, since any account of figurative language would be incomplete
without making reference to the interactive dimension of figures. In order to
analyse this collaborative nature, listeners’ reactions and their own further
contributions to the speaker’s overstatement will be examined.
Within figurative language theories, tropes such as metaphor
and irony have received the greatest amount of attention, while other
non-literal forms, like hyperbole, have been relatively ignored as a result of
such intensive research effort. In fact, some researchers seem to equate
metaphor and irony with all forms of figuration, although arguably, “this
tendency only serves to blur important distinctions between the tropes” (Kreuz
and Roberts 1993: 155).
Hyperbole is usually defined as a form of extremity, an exaggeration
that either magnifies or minimises some real state of affairs. Exaggerated
expressions have traditionally been thought of as overstated simulacrums of
reality. It is striking, though, that despite its pervasive frequency of
occurrence, the study of hyperbole tends to be neglected by figurative language
scholars. Kreuz et al. (1996), after studying eight main forms of non-literal
language in a corpus of contemporary American short stories, adduce empirical
evidence of this pervasiveness by showing that after metaphor, hyperbole is the
commonest trope. And so they claim that “in terms of sheer occurrence,
hyperbole seems to deserve more notice than it has received to date" (p.
91). The importance of hyperbole becomes even clearer after an inspection of
the co-occurrence matrix in the aforementioned study. They also demonstrated
that exaggeration is by far the trope that most often co-occurs with other
figures. It was involved in almost 80% of the cases of co-occurrence, and it
interacted with every other type of non-literal language with the exception of
its logical opposite, understatement.
Although hyperbole has been, since late antiquity, one of the
many figures of speech discussed within the general framework of rhetoric, the
emphasis has been primarily laid on defining, classifying and illustrating this
trope. In contemporary language theories, the paucity of studies addressing
hyperbole is most notable, probably because in other disciplines it has been
considered a classic trope whose study belongs to that of rhetoric. Thus, no
serious attention has been paid to the study of hyperbole in the domains of
linguistics, psychology, philosophy or literary criticism. Most of the
empirical work on exaggeration has involved comparisons of frequency and use in
different cultures (e.g., Spitzbardt 1963, Cohen 1987, Edelman et al. 1989).
Apart from these cross-cultural studies, most interest in hyperboles has been
almost invariably directed at explaining the psychological processes operated
on their understanding, being much of this literature subsumed within studies
of verbal irony or theories of humour.
Two competing views on hyperbole comprehension have been
identified. The first is the so-called Mere
Inconsistency Hypothesis, whereby an implicature is said to underlie
hyperbole understanding since it flouts conversational maxims (e.g., Grice
1975, Brown and Levinson 1987). The most recent and widely accepted view,
however, embraces the notion of contrast as
postulated in cognitive psychology. As Colston and O’Brien (2000a: 1559)
clearly put it:
In using the term “contrast” we do not only mean the
incongruity of a remark with its referent topic. We additionally refer to the
specific effect of the perception or judgement of a topic or event being
changed via direct comparison with a different topic or event that varies along
some relevant dimension.
Modern theories of non-literal language incorporate this
notion as a defining feature of hyperbole and related tropes (e.g., Colston
1997b, Colston and O’Brien 2000a, 2000b, Colston and Keller 1998). In the case
of hyperbole, this is succinctly explained by McCarthy and Carter (forthcoming)
in noting that “hyperbole magnifies and upscales reality, and, naturally,
upscaling produces a contrast with reality”.
Within the production process, hardly ever has the pragmatic
functioning of overstated remarks been discussed, probably because of the
intensive research effort on comprehension. Although some functions of
exaggeration have been pointed out, especially humour and evaluation, they have
not been fully described, the existing literature has been restrained to their
identification, nor is there any full account of hyperbolic functions published
to date. Nowadays, most interest in the pragmatic accomplishments of hyperbole
is concentrated on the field of psycholinguistics and embedded within studies
of other tropes, especially irony and understatement, to compare how they
accomplish the same functions but to different extents or with different
degrees of success (e.g., Roberts and Kreuz 1994, Sell et al. 1997, Colston and
Keller 1998, Colston and O’Brien 2000a, 2000b). Even though it is meriting that
these studies have not totally disregarded the production process in favour of
the comprehension issue, they only hint at the variability in the pragmatic
functions accomplished by these tropes.
Hyperbole has a long history of study, going back to
Aristotle, as a rhetorical figure in written texts. Since rhetoric practice has
traditionally been associated to the production of persuasive speech, and later
to aesthetics and literature, only relatively recently has the study of
figurative language been switched into the domain of banal, everyday language.
Although hyperbole is a ubiquitous feature in everyday speech, not a great
amount of empirical research exists into everyday spoken hyperbole. This
explains that overstatement has not been analysed interactively in
conversation, as a joint activity between speaker and hearer, and taking into
account listeners’ responses to figuration.
Discourse is a joint activity carried out by an ensemble of
two or more people trying to accomplish things together (Atkinson and Heritage
1984, Sacks et al. 1974). The idea is that “conversations [...] are not created
by speakers acting autonomously. Rather, they are the emergent products of an
ensemble of people working together” (Clark 1994: 986). This joint activity
view of discourse has been recently applied to figurative language theories,
especially to the master tropes, metaphor and irony, although there is also
some research on idiomatic expressions. The majority of studies about the
interactive and collaborative creation of figures can be found in the field of
psychotherapy, as attempts to understand how clients and, to a lesser extent,
therapists conceptualise and negotiate subjective experiences in terms of
figures.
Similarly, Fussell and Moss (1998) addressed the role of
conversational interactivity in figurative language use in a corpus of
affective communication. They found numerous examples of joint productions
containing figurative language, such as repetition of speakers’ figurative
utterance and listeners’ prediction of what is implied by a figurative
expression. The presence of feedback also enabled speakers and hearers to
ensure that expressions having a figurative interpretation were understood
correctly. Finally, they note that listeners also commonly responded to
figurative remarks with a reformulation in other figurative terms, or they
suggested figurative paraphrases.
Haverkate (1990: 108) was probably the first to suggest studying
hearers’ reactions to irony in noting that “at the level of discourse it would
be interesting to investigate the relation between the interactional attitude
of the ironic speaker and the reaction to it by the hearer”. In this line, a
major contribution to the discussion of irony is that of Clift (1999), who
examines irony within a conversation analysis framework, paying particular
attention to shifts in footing. Many of her examples contain instances of
hyperbole within the ironic frame, since footing often shifts “toward the
extreme” and invokes “extraordinary, impossible worlds” in ironic contexts (p.
540). She takes an interactive perspective in addressing hearers’ reactions to
ironic utterances, with laughter and/or the continuation of irony been
typically the response of the addressee to recognised irony.
Gibbs (2000) has also analysed listeners’ responses to irony
and how speaker and listener actively collaborate to create ironic scenes. His
account of verbal irony includes five main forms: hyperbole, understatement,
sarcasm, rhetorical questions and jocularity, although a closer look to
hyperbolic utterances reveals that they are indeed instances of hyperbolic
irony. Even though sometimes addressees ignored the intended irony or changed
the subject right away, clues in the data such as laughter, literal remarks
indicating understanding of the speaker’s ironic intent and the take-up and
continuation of irony by participants, says Gibbs, are crucial to demonstrate
this collaborative construction of irony. In his concluding remarks, Gibbs
(2000: 25) notes:
Perhaps the most interesting finding from this project were
the large degree to which addressees responded to a speaker’s irony by saying
something ironic in return. This result had not been previously noted, but
suggests how irony is as much a state of mind jointly created by speakers and
listeners, as it is a special kind of figurative language. The give-and-take
nature of irony also illustrates the importance of collaboration in
psychological models of speaking and listening.
On the other hand, Drew and Holt (1998) have inquired into
the interactional role that idiomatic expressions play in language, paying
special attention to their sequential distribution in conversation. A clear
distributional pattern was found in their data: idioms occur regularly in topic
transition sequences, and specifically in the turn where a topic is summarised,
thereby initiating the closing of that topic. They treat figurative expressions
as one of those linguistic components of turn design “through which speakers
manage, collaboratively, certain sequentially embedded activities” (p. 497).
Thus, the production of an idiomatic summary, followed by each of the speakers
declining to develop the topic further, and the subsequent introduction of a
next topic, can be considered a topic transition sequence “through which
co-participants collaboratively disengage from a current topic and move to a
next” (p. 505).
These approaches seem equally valid for the study of
hyperbole, since exaggeration is implicit in many of the figures discussed
above and indeed, many of the transcribed examples in the aforementioned
studies contain exaggerated and counterfactual utterances. Yet, this collaborative
nature of hyperbole has only been discussed with regard to interpretation. In
this sense,
The aim of this paper is to explore the role of
conversational interactivity in hyperbole construction and comprehension. Since
hyperbole needs to be viewed as a collaborative act, involving both the speaker
and listener, we will pay special attention to listeners’ responses within the
reception process.
In order to analyse listeners’ reactions to overstatement, a
corpus of naturally-occurring spoken conversations, chosen at random from the British National Corpus (BNC,
henceforth), was examined. The BNC can be defined as a collection of samples of
contemporary British English, both spoken and written, stored in electronic
form, although for the present study only transcribed spoken material was
subject to analysis. The focus is on speech, rather than writing, since not a
great amount of empirical work exists into spoken hyperbole and only
conversational interactivity can show the collaborative nature of the trope.
Nine interactions of an informal nature, normally between
relatives or friends, totalling 10,158 words were examined. The entirety of the
conversations was analysed and the occurrences of hyperbolic phrases and
clauses identified. The texts vary in terms of length and number of hyperboles,
since speakers obviously differ in their creative abilities. The total amount
of overstated remarks was eighty-eight. The following table shows the total
amount of words and hyperbolic occurrences per interaction.
|
BNC text |
KB0 |
KB2 |
KB7 |
KBA |
KC6 |
KP9 |
KPC |
KPE |
KSR |
|
Word count |
1451 |
550 |
1026 |
335 |
581 |
2253 |
2692 |
497 |
773 |
|
Hyperbolic occurrences |
7 |
5 |
9 |
6 |
8 |
23 |
18 |
6 |
6 |
Within the reception process, two broad types of listeners’
reactions to hyperbole can be clearly distinguished in our data, namely
positive and negative evidence. There was just an instance where the hearer’s
response could not be determined, since the speaker’s exaggerated remark closes
the conversation. The table below offers a detailed typology of listeners’
responses to overstatement and, in brackets, the number of occurrences in our
corpus.
Positive
evidence (59) |
Back channel responses (22) |
|
|
Relevant next contribution |
Literal remark (12) |
|
|
Humorous remark (5) |
||
|
Laughter (4) |
||
|
Take-up and continuation of figures (5) |
||
|
Collaborative completion (2) |
||
|
Repetition or figurative paraphrase (4) |
||
|
Non-verbal response (5) |
||
|
Negative evidence (38) |
Non-recognised hyperbole (15) |
Missed hyperbole and/or negation or correction (6) |
|
Request for clarification, confirmation, repetition (9) |
||
|
H ignores hyperbole and/or shifts topic (23) |
||
Positive evidence,
indicating understanding of the speaker’s overstatement, was the most recurrent
pattern of listeners’ responses to hyperbole. It accounts for 60% of the
hearer’s reactions in our data. This kind of evidence operates both at the
level of message comprehension and joint creation of non-literal expressions.
Positive evidence has, as
(1) <KB2 text>
Joyce: I'm not envious of their heating.
Alec: Eh?
Joyce: I'm not envious of their heating ... freezing in their hall,
isn't much, you can nearly see the ...
outside through their door and all
cold's coming in, it's worse than our door.
Alec: Mm.
Joyce: It is. ... She's right though about Annie,
Annie will just have what she wants.
Alec:
Yeah, mm.
Relevant next contributions were by far the most common type of
response to hyperbole in the data. It refers to any kind of reaction which is
appropriate to the speaker’s overstated remark. The adequacy or relevance of
the response indicates an optimal understanding of hyperbole. There is a wide
range of forms through which a relevant next contribution may be realised.
Seven different types were identified in our transcriptions. The most recurrent
pattern was a literal remark indicating understanding of the speaker’s intent.
(2) <KSR text>
Clare: Now this one, if you, you can work out how it works,
cos I can't work out ... how ... to get that antiperspirant to go on your body.
... It's a bit stupid.
Clare: What did you do?
Clare: Well, I couldn't work out how to do that! Oh, oh. What
have you done now?
Clare: Yeah.
Clare: And I was trying like, I was going like that for ages.
Clare: Oh don't, oh don't waste it.
Other forms of relevant next contribution include the use of
humorous responses and laughter by the listener. Since humour has often been
pointed out as a prominent goal of exaggeration (e.g., Long and Graesser 1988,
Roberts and Kreuz 1994, Colston and O’Brien 2000b), laughter is commonly, as
McCarthy and Carter (forthcoming) have noted, an accompanying feature of many
hyperbolic remarks that serves to emphasise the alignment between participants.
The excerpt below is illustrative enough.
(3) <KB7 text>
Stuart: What's going on outside? ...
Car or lorry or something going by by the sound of it.
Ann: About that little ... flat in
... in
Stuart: Yeah.
Ann: You have to realize that ... we're never gonna get away from work. ‘Cos
when the wind blows you can smell a tandoori and [laugh]
Stuart: [laugh]
Ann: It's when you walk up that way
you know you're getting near it.
Stuart: Yeah.
Ann: Cos you can smell it.
Sometimes, the listener contributes with a humorous remark,
often hyperbolic too. The following extract is remarkable for the accumulation
of hyperboles to produce a comic effect. Claire’s utterance, No, I’ve got a beard, in response to
Craig’s overstated description, No,
Vicky’s got a beard, is not only an exaggeration but an instance of
humorous self-deprecation. Since the hyperbolic event is an extended scenario
where participants jointly create humour, it appears that figures need to be
examined over turn-boundaries.
(4) <KP9 text>
Craig: Who? [whispering] Yeah, oh, I
don't like her. She's got a moustache.
Claire: Well, Vicky has, but she
can't help it.
Craig: No, Vicky's got a beard.
Claire: No, I've got a beard.
Craig: [tut]! Oh. Teaspoon.
PS000 >: If you dry up and put
them there now cos it's nearly...
Jo: I got nice baggy arse here.
Craig: [laugh] ... Are they ... riding jodhpurs, aren't they?
Jo: Yeah, well, such a shame.
This leads us to another type of relevant next contribution,
namely the take-up and continuation of figuration. When an exaggeration occurs,
it is not rare to find that the listener responds with another figure of speech
that contributes to the emergence of a non-literal context. In our data, this
normally means the use of another hyperbole or a form of verbal irony. In the
following example the hearer’s contribution is also clearly exaggerated, and
therefore we can talk about the take-up and continuation of hyperbole by
participants, as well as the joint creation of a hyperbolic frame.
(5) <KBA text>
Chris: I like Mr Bean.
Dave: Mr Bean, that's fucking
brilliant, that is.
Chris: He just cracks
me up. I tell you what, I can sit there ... two things I like ... no three.
A good film.
Dave: Yeah.
Chris: I mean a good film. Cartoons.
Dave: Oh fuck, yeah.
Chris: I love cartoons. Tom and Jerry I like.
Another curious form of contribution is the “collaborative
completion” (Clark 1994: 994), whereby the listener typically anticipates what
the speaker means or predicts the speaker’s words and completes the utterance.
The following extract may serve to illustrate the case.
(6) <KB7 text>
Stuart: Yes. It's going slowly now.
Ann: [laugh] Yeah.
Stuart: Going much more slowly now as
it records more ... conver conversations.
Ann: That's it. ... Mm ... Don't stop
talking now. silly. [laugh] ... It's all
gonna go quiet now, isn't it? Nobody else'll say anything ...
Stuart: at all.
Ann: [laugh] That's ridiculous!
[laughing] You gotta
Stuart: We'll just have to ... put it
down there some time and just ... put it on.
Ann: Yeah.
Stuart: So you wouldn't know when
it's on or when it's off.
Ann: Mm.
Stuart: Just have to try and, take a
little while to get used to it. Once you're used to it, it's probably... It's
all a matter of getting used to being recorded. Conversation.
Although rarely in our transcriptions, listeners sometimes
repeated the speaker’s hyperbole or paraphrased it in other figurative terms.
The following is an example of repetition of the speaker’s words, where the
hyperbole is intended for aggression.
(7) <KPE text>
Ian: Are you stuck? Yes or no, are you stuck?
Grace: But, why?
PS000 >: If I ask somebody stuck, you're not gonna go why.
Then I'm gonna say little bit.
Grace: A little bit?
Ian: Yes.
Grace: So am I, a little bit. Why?
Ian: Smelly bitch.
Grace: That's all you
can say, innit? Can't say nothing else.
Ian: Can't say nothing
else.
Grace: Can I have a pen?
Ian: You got anything to say, say it out loud. Fucking bitch.
Alright, if you've got anything to say ... don't smoke. You understand English?
Are you cooperating properly?
Finally, non-verbal reactions were also found in our data.
Curiously enough, they all occur in the same conversation, between a mother and
her children. A clear pattern emerges after examining the role of hyperbole in
this context: overstatement is used to mitigate a command or request, and so
the expected response is typically non-linguistic. In the following excerpt
(8) <KPC text>
Kaley: Can I tell dad something?
Francis: Tell dad I wanna tell him something.
Brett: No.
Addressees are expected
to provide speakers not only with positive evidence when they have understood
something but also with negative evidence when they believe they have not
(Clark 1994: 993). Negative evidence accounts for 39% of listeners’ reactions
to hyperbole in our data. Apart from defective comprehension of the speaker’s
words, this kind of evidence refers to any type of reaction which was not
expected or not intended by the speaker. There are two main forms of negative
evidence in our transcriptions. By far, the most recurrent type is ignoring the
hyperbole and/or shifting the topic, as in the excerpt below.
(9) <KBA text>
Kevin: Three's ... a load of crap. That's the 3D one.
Chris: This one though I think it's not, I think
it's just the people having nightmares about it.
Achmed: I don't know. It's supposed to be down in th, that,
him following that, following that family, innit? Supposed to be, supposed to
be following the family wherever they go on the beach.
Chris: Is it?
Achmed: Something like that. Michael Caine's in it. Although
er it looked pretty pathetic ... it
was on. We had a preview of it at home.
Dave: Fucking miss erm
... We missed Carrot, Carrot was on last night, weren't it?
Chris: Mm, Jasper, yeah.
Other forms of negative evidence signal that the hearer has
missed or misunderstood the speaker’s words. In cases of non-recognised
hyperbole, listeners may, for example, interpret the utterance literally, and
so it is not rare to find that they negate or correct the hyperbole to make the
words fit the world. In this example the hearer corrects the speaker by
uttering a literal remark which depicts the real state of affairs.
(10) <KB7 text>
Ann: [cough] ... Oh, I'd better go
and wash our dishes dear.
Stuart: Not many to do now ... done
them all.
Ann: Most of them. There's only yours. Have you had
Stuart: What about?
Ann: enough to eat?
Stuart: Yes, thank you. Fine. I would
have done it actually when, when I took the plate out but the water in the bowl
was cold. Thought it was hot but it was cold.
Ann: I think I've used most of the hot water.
In some other cases, the hearer is forced to request for
clarification, confirmation or simply repetition. The following extract may
serve to exemplify this negotiation of meaning between conversational partners
when the listener has doubts about whether to interpret the speaker’s utterance
literally or figuratively.
(11) <KC6 text>
Gavin: Anybody see Central last night?
Nick: Er ... did I see it or not? No, I didn't see it last
night. ... Polished off three bottles of
champagne last night!
Gavin: Did
you?
Nick: Jo, Jo, Joan had sixteen bottles of it!
Gavin: Who?
Nick: We, Joan wanted to take it into the party the other
night ... they wouldn't let her. So she gave them to, loads to Joe, she got
loads of .... Joan had one and me and Mark had two which .... Still got that
teacher accused of er ... [cough] ... insulting the kids at ... schools.
The fact that
speakers can use listeners’ responses to monitor their comprehension may help
explain that the rate of figurative language use might be higher in
conversation than in non-interactive settings, because there is less risk of
misunderstanding when feedback from listeners can be used to indicate that
clarification is needed (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs 1986, Kraut et al. 1982).
Nevertheless, the total amount of non-recognised hyperbole in our data,
strongly suggests that speaking hyperbolically, rather than literally, is not
such a risky activity, especially when considering that the problem of
misunderstanding is actually a pretence (for example, to avoid a
face-threatening act), or due to defective hearing in six out of fifteen cases.
Finally, we must also
note that, although rarely, the hearer’s contribution may be classified as a
combination of different response types. This poses problems to calculate
percentages, even though, these compound responses usually occur within the
same evidence type, whether positive or negative. The following example is
striking since four different types of responses can be clearly identified: a
request for confirmation, an acceptance token, laughter and a literal remark
indicating understanding of the speaker’s overstated description.
(12) <KC6>
Gavin: No, I didn't see that film last night. The
one about the musician killed, committed suicide?
Nick: It was totally
shit!
Gavin: Was
it, yeah? Oh, [laughing] I'm glad I didn't watch it then.
Nick: Can you imagine
the worst American teen corn movie ... that you've ever seen? This was.
In line with studies advocating a conversational and
discourse analysis approach to the study of non-literal language, this paper
has attempted to provide a general framework for the description and
understanding of hyperbole in interaction, a long neglected trope despite its
pervasive frequency of occurrence and co-occurrence with other figures in
everyday speech. Rather than addressing the psychological process operated on
hyperbole comprehension, this study has addressed the production process of
exaggerated remarks in naturally-occurring conversations, an issue which almost
invariably has been solely associated to the speaker alone. By contrast, we
have tried, through the examination of listeners’ responses, to show the
collaborative and interactive nature of hyperbole, as a joint activity between
speaker and hearer, an aspect that only recently has been discussed in the
literature on irony and metaphor. Thus, we adhere to the view that the study of
psychological factors should be complemented by one focusing on the production
and joint creation of figurative language.
We have, hopefully, explored the role of conversational
interactivity in the collaborative construction and message comprehension of
exaggerated remarks. The results suggest that besides providing feedback about
listeners’ understanding of messages, conversational interaction allows for
collaboration in the creation of figurative messages themselves. Listeners’
responses, apart from signals of comprehension, whether effective or defective,
also allow to contribute to the emergence of a figurative frame. Key evidence,
both positive and negative, such as back channel responses, relevant next
contributions, shifts in topic, refusals to acknowledge the speaker’s
overstatement and evidence of non-recognised hyperbole, strongly suggests that
hyperbole needs to be viewed interactively. Hyperbole, as McCarthy and Carter
(forthcoming) clearly put it, “is only validated in interaction and can only be
described adequately by including the listener’s contributions to the unfolding
act, rather than being examined as a single, creative act by the speaker alone,
or solely within the domain of intention”. The study of listeners’ reactions
and responses to figures also shows the need of examining figures over turn-boundaries
and within the constraints of placement and sequencing of conversational
analysis. It also suggests that researchers should examine the entirety of a
conversation, rather than studying figurative language in isolation or in
decontextualised situations.
The results may also serve to demonstrate that the use of
hyperboles is not rare or limited to poetic situations, but rather, and given
that hardly ever do they pose problems of comprehension, they are ubiquitous
features in everyday conversation. This adheres to a prevailing view among
figurative language researchers, namely that figures provide part of the
figurative foundation for everyday thought (e.g., Lakoff and Johnson 1980,
Gibbs 1994, Turner 1998). The application of this finding to the area of
foreign language teaching may also be useful to raise students’ awareness that
figures of speech are part and parcel of everyday speech, and therefore should
be taught as part of students’ communicative competence.
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