Hyperbole and understatement

Hyperbole and understatement. Hyperbole is a lexical stylistic device in which emphasis is achieved through deliberate exaggeration. Hyperbole is one of the common expressive means of our everyday speech (e.g. “I have told it to you a thousand times”). Due to long and repeated use hyperboles have lost their originality. Hyperbole can be expressed by all notional parts of speech. It is important that both communicants should clearly perceive that the exaggeration serves not to denote actual quality or quantity but signals the emotional background of the utterance.

If this reciprocal understanding is absent, hyperbole turns into a mere lie. Hyperbole is aimed at exaggerating quantity or quality. When it is directed the opposite way, when the size, shape, dimensions, characteristic features of the object are not overrated, but intentionally underrated, we deal with understatement. English is well known for its preference for understatement in everyday speech. “I am rather annoyed” instead of “I’m infuriated’, “The wind is rather strong” instead of “There’s a gale blowing outside” are typical of British polite speech, but are less characteristic of American English.

Oxymoron Oxymoron is lexical stylistic device the syntactic and semantic structures of which come to clashes (e.g. “cold fire”, “brawling love”). The most widely known structure of oxymoron is attributive. But there are also others, in which verbs are employed. Such verbal structures as “to shout mutely” or “to cry silently” are used to strengthen the idea. Oxymoron may be considered as a specific type of epithet. Originality and specificity of oxymoron becomes especially evident in non-attributive structures which also (not infrequently) are used to express semantic contradiction as in “the street was damaged by improvements”, “silence was louder than thunder”. Oxymorons rarely become trite, for their components, linked forcibly, repulse each other and oppose repeated use. There are few colloquial oxymorons, all of them show a high degree of the speaker’s emotional involvement in the situation, as in “awfully pretty”. 1. Y.M.Skrebnev.

Fundamentals of English Stylistics.

M. V.Sh. 1994 2. I.R.Galperin. Stylistics. M. V.Sh. 1981 3. V.A.Kukharenko. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. M. V.Sh. 1986.