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You'll Never Believe This: Irony and Hyperbole in Expressing Surprise

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Abstract

Three experiments compared how people comprehend irony and hyperbole as expressing surprise. Experiment 1 demonstrated that, when irony and hyperbole are used together, they express more surprise than if either is used alone. There was no difference between the degree of surprise expressed by hyperbole and irony, although both expressed more surprise than literal commentary. Experiment 2 revealed that, when a speaker has exaggerated about some unexpected event, as much surprise is expressed by very slight, realistically possible hyperbole as by outlandish, impossible hyperbole. In a third experiment the range of possible levels of hyperbole tested in Experiment 2 was shown to cause differences in how easy it was to determine that a speaker was surprised at some turn of events. The results are discussed in terms of theories of irony and hyperbole comprehension.

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Author notes

  1. Herbert L. Colston

    Present address: Interval Research Corporation, Palo Alto, California, 94304

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, 95064, and

    Herbert L. Colston & Shauna B. Keller

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  1. Herbert L. Colston
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  2. Shauna B. Keller
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Colston, H.L., Keller, S.B. You'll Never Believe This: Irony and Hyperbole in Expressing Surprise. J Psycholinguist Res 27, 499–513 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023229304509

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023229304509

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