Continuum or separation? A theoretical account of metaphorical hyperboles

Although metaphor and hyperbole are frequently observed together in linguistic usage (Cano Mora, 2011), recent research has challenged the continuum view of the two figurative devices, suggesting that they are discrete categories of language use that can occur independently of each other (Burgers et al., 2018; Carston & Wearing, 2015; Deamer, 2013). However, the majority of studies investigating the combination of metaphor and hyperbole have thus far remained theoretical, with researchers often relying on illustrative examples to qualitatively demonstrate the separation of the two figurative devices. Empirical research conducted in authentic discourse contexts remains limited.
The present study employs a corpus-assisted approach to examine the manifestation, function, and cognitive mechanisms of metaphorical hyperbole in real-world discourse. Specifically, luxury hotel websites from Hong Kong and Singapore (N = 61, 185,231 tokens) serve as the contextual background for this investigation. The study identifies 894 lexical units in our corpus that exhibit both metaphorical and hyperbolic readings. Furthermore, we find two different types of metaphorical hyperbole based on their different underlying structures, namely primary metaphorical hyperbole and complex metaphorical hyperbole. The analysis yields a total of 424 primary metaphorical hyperboles and 470 cases of complex metaphorical hyperboles.
In the case of primary metaphorical hyperbole, recipients mainly rely on procedural/sensorimotor experience to build the sense of graded degree. An example of this type of scale is <highest, average, lowest> for the expression “highest standard,” where the hyperbolic reading is anchored in the linguistic scale (Claridge, 2011). In contrast, complex metaphorical hyperbole has a more complex cognitive structure, requiring the recruitment of additional encyclopedic knowledge in addition to bodily experience in the process of meaning comprehension. For example, in the expression “PolyU is an academic heaven,” recipients need to incorporate cultural understanding (i.e., knowledge of religion) into the embodied experience (i.e., our daily experience of SPACE) in order to construct the graded scale <hell, earth, heaven>.
Practically, the corpus-assisted approach offers empirical evidence regarding the manifestation and frequency of metaphorical hyperbole in authentic promotional discourse. Theoretically, this study contributes to the advancement and refinement of existing theories of figurative language by introducing cognitive models that more effectively capture metaphorical hyperboles with different underlying mechanisms (e.g., Brdar-Szabó and Brdar, 2005; Vereza, 2016).