Its frequent use is characteristic of the publicistic style.

Hyperbole is a deliberate overstatement or exaggeration, the aim of which is to intensify one of the features of the object in question to such a degree as to show its utter absurdity, e.g. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he is alive; She was so tall that I doubt whether she has a face; When I was born I was so surprised that I couldn’t talk for year and a half. To put it in other words, hyperbole is a transfer of the meaning when the speaker uses exaggeration, e.g. "to hate"(doing something), (not to see somebody) "for ages". Hyperbole is often used to form phraseological units, e.g. "to make a mountain out of a molehill" (делать из мухи слона, преувеличивать), "to split hairs" (вдаваться в тонкости) etc.

Like many SDs, hyperbole may lose its originality and quality as a SD through frequent repetition and become a unit of the language as a system, reproduced in speech in its unaltered form. Here there are some examples: a thousand pardons, scared to death, immensely obliged, give the world to see him. Hyperbole can be expressed by all notional parts of speech.

Hyperbole can create a humorous effect: Ex.: In your own house you may kick him downstairs & slam the door in his face without the suspicion coming on him that he was not a welcome visitor. It may also create ironical effect, it may help to vividly characterize a person or a thing.

Hyperbole is an integral part of such SDs as simile, metaphor, irony. Ex: He had just told her (in Italian) that her eyes made the blue of the Mediterranean look like a pea-soup.

Hyperbole differs from mere exaggeration in that it is intended to be understood as an exaggeration. In this connection the following quotations deserve, a passing note: "Hyperbole is the result of a kind of intoxication by emotion, which prevents a person from seeing things in their-true dimensions... If the reader (listener) is not-carried away by the emotion of the writer (speaker), hyperbole becomes a mere lie."

Hyperbole is a device which sharpens the reader's ability to make a logical assessment of the utterance. This is achieved, as in case with other devices, by awakening the dichotomy of thought and feeling where thought takes the upper hand though not to the ‘detriment of feeling. 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.

Understatement, irony, zeugma and pun

Understatement is the reverse of exaggeration. The relations, or feelings, or qualities of the object are intentionally underrated, diminishing the importance of event.

Ex. She looked at me with not much joy. I wasn’t what you can call in a fever of impatience.

Understatement is a SD which consists in lessening, reducing the real quantity of the object. The psychological essence of understatement is more complicated than that of hyperbole. The hearer is expected to understand the intentional discrepancy between what the speaker says about the object and what he really thinks about it. 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 (буря) blowing outside” are typical of British polite speech, but are less characteristic of American English.

Irony is a stylistic device based on the simultaneous realization of two logical meanings - dictionary and contextual, but the two meanings stand in opposition to each other. E.g. "It must be delightful to find oneself in a foreign country without a penny in one's pocket."

“What a noble illustration of the tender laws of this favored country! – they let the paupers go to sleep!”(Dickens)

Irony must not be confused with humor, although they have very much in common. Humor always causes laughter. What is funny must come as sudden clash of the positive and the negative. In this respect irony can be likened to humor. But the function of irony is not confined to producing a humorous effect. In a sentence like "How clever of you" where, due to the intonation pattern, the word "clever" conveys a sense opposite to its literal signification, the irony does not cause a ludicrous effect. It rather expresses a feeling of irritation, displeasure, pity or regret. The context is arranged so that the qualifying word in irony reverses the direction of the evaluation, and the word positively charged is understood as a negative qualification and (much-much rarer) vice versa.

Richard Altick says, "The effect of irony lies in the striking disparity between what is said and what is meant." This "striking disparity" is achieved through the intentional interplay of the two meanings, which are in opposition to each other. We must also take into consideration that irony is generally used to convey a negative meaning. Therefore only positive concepts may be used in their logical dictionary meanings. Irony does not exist outside the context, which varies from the minimal - a word combination, as in J. Steinbeck's "She turned with the sweet smile of an alligator,"- to the context of a whole book.