This Book Will Change Your Life!:Hyperbole in Spoken English

Although metaphor and irony have received the greatest attention, there is much more to figurative language than the so-called master tropes. This volume intends to shed light on a long neglected figure: hyperbole. Using multidisciplinary standpoints, it analyses the exploitation of hyperbole in naturally-occurring speech and in doing so breaks with the long-standing tradition of studying figures in written or literary texts. Rather than addressing the over-researched comprehension of non-literal language, the focus is on the production of hyperbole. However, because any full account of figures must refer to their interactive dimension, I also analysed the reception process, in terms of listeners’ reactions to hyperbole. Throughout this book hyperbole is depicted as a universal, affective and typically informal figure, which entails a low risk of being misunderstood. It is also a collaborative trope, rather than a single creative act of the speaker alone. This volume is of direct interest to figurative language researchers since its novel methodology and framework of analysis is equally applicable to the study of other figurative language forms.