Hyperbole and emotionalisation

Escalation of pragmatic effects of proverb and metaphor in the “Brexit” debate

Bibliographic Data

ID22248195
AuthorsAndreas Musolff (0000-0001-5635-7517, University of East Anglia, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume25
Issue3
Pages628-644
Publication date2021-12-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRussian Journal of Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2686-8024 • E-ISSN: 2687-0088
PublisherPeoples' Friendship University of Russia (PUBLISHER • RU)
DOI10.22363/2687-0088-2021-25-3-628-644
OpenAlexW3202136460
LanguageEN
Citations received21
References cited14

(How) Can the use of hyperbole in metaphorical idioms and scenarios contribute to an increase in emotionalisation of public debates? Using a research corpus of quotations from British politicians speeches and interviews and of press texts 2016-2020, this paper investigates hyperbolic formulations in Brexit-related applications of the proverb You cannot have your cake and eat it and related scenarios of national liberation, which appear to have strongly boosted emotionalised public debates. For instance, Brexit proponents reversal of the cake proverb into the assertion, We can have our cake and eat it, and their figurative interpretation of Brexit as a war of liberation (against the EU) triggered highly emotional reactions: triumphant affirmation among followers, fear and resentment among opponents. The paper argues that the combination of figurative speech (proverb, metaphor) with hyperbole heightened the emotional and polemical impact of the pro-Brexit argument. Whilst this effect may be deemed to have been rhetorically successful in the short term (e.g. in referendum and election campaigns), its long-term effect on political discourse is more ambivalent, for it leads to a polarisation and radicalisation of political discourse in Britain (as evidenced, for instance, in the massive use of hyperbole in COVID-19 debates). The study of hyperbole as a means of emotionalisation thus seems most promising as part of a discourse-historical investigation of socio-pragmatic effects of figurative (mainly, metaphorical) language use, rather than as an isolated, one-off rhetorical phenomenon

Ambivalence · Art · Brexit · Economics · European union · Hyperbole · Linguistics · Literal and figurative language · Literature · Metaphor · Political science · Politics · Referendum · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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