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Cited by 260

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 35 of the 35 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Hyperbolic language and its relation to metaphor and irony

Open access
Carston, Robyn, Wearing, Catherine·2015·Journal of Pragmatics

Abstract

Hyperbolic use of language is very frequent but has seldom been thought worthy of serious analytical attention. Hyperbole is usually treated as a minor trope which belongs with one or the other of the two dominant figurative uses of language, metaphor and irony. In this paper, we examine the range of ways in which hyperbole is manifest, in both its ‘pure’ uses and its prevalent co-occurrences with other tropes. We conclude that it does not align closely with either metaphor or irony but is a distinctive figure of speech in its own right, characterized by the blatant exaggeration of a relevant scalar property for the purpose of expressing an evaluation of a state of affairs. The relative simplicity of hyperbole enables its exploitation of a range of independent mechanisms of non-literal linguistic communication including loose use, metaphor, simile, and expressions of ironical and other attitudes.

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Metadata

Authors
Carston, R., & Wearing, C.
Venue
Journal of Pragmatics
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2015-04
Volume
79
Pages
79-92
ISSN
0378-2166 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2069307174
Cited by
260
References
35
FWCI
18.38
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Hyperbolic language and its relation to metaphor and irony. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.01.011
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Carston, R., & Wearing, C. (2015). Hyperbolic language and its relation to metaphor and irony. Journal of Pragmatics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.01.011

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.