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Although Mark 10,25 is widely regarded as a prototypical example of hyperbole, the reasons for this are often unspecified. That is problematic. In what follows, modern and ancient discussions of hyperbole will be used in an attempt to resolve the problem. Relevance theory assumes that hyperbole comprises both a scalar (saying more or less about something than is the case) and an expressive (i.e. evaluative/emotional) quality. To be successful, the hearer must distinguish between the propositional meaning (the more or less that is said about something) and the intended meaning (what is accepted as the case). Ancient discussions recognize the scalar and expressive qualities of hyperbole, but add a further consideration, namely, the linguistic features employed in its construction. This article concludes that Mark 10,25 was understood literally by the disciples, but that it displays the features necessary to qualify as hyperbolic, and that it was undoubtedly understood that way by Mark’s readers. The disciples’ misunderstanding is used by the evangelist to lead the dialogue into a consideration of the importance of divine goodness for salvation.

One of the most puzzling and important facts about communication is that people do not always mean what they say; speakers often use imprecise, exaggerated, or otherwise literally false descriptions to communicate experiences and attitudes. Here, we focus on the nonliteral interpretation of number words, in particular hyperbole (interpreting unlikely numbers as exaggerated and conveying affect) and pragmatic halo (interpreting round numbers imprecisely). We provide a computational model of number interpretation as social inference regarding the communicative goal, meaning, and affective subtext of an utterance. We show that our model predicts humans’ interpretation of number words with high accuracy. Our model is the first to our knowledge to incorporate principles of communication and empirically measured background knowledge to quantitatively predict hyperbolic and pragmatic halo effects in number interpretation. This modeling framework provides a unified approach to nonliteral language understanding more generally.

Background Numerous groups, such as the tobacco industry, have deliberately altered and misrepresented knowable facts and empirical evidence to promote an agenda, often for monetary benefit, with consequences for environmental and public health. Previous research has explored cases individually, but none have conducted an in-depth comparison between cases. The purpose of this study was to compile a comprehensive list of tactics used by disparate groups and provide a framework for identifying further instances of manufactured doubt. Methods We examined scholarly books, peer-reviewed articles, well-researched journalism pieces, and legal evidence related to five disparate industries and organizations selected for their destructive impacts on environmental and public health (tobacco, coal, and sugar industries, manufacturers of the pesticide Atrazine, and the Marshall Institute, an institute focused on climate change research, and other scientists from the era that associated with those in the Institute). These documents provided evidence for a list of tactics used to generate pro-industry spin and manufacture doubt about conferred harm. We then identified trends among sets of strategies that could explain their differential use or efficacy. Results We recognized 28 unique tactics used to manufacture doubt. Five of these tactics were used by all five organizations, suggesting that they are key features of manufactured doubt. The intended audience influences the strategy used to misinform, and logical fallacies contribute to their efficacy. Conclusions This list of tactics can be used by others to build a case that an industry or group is deliberately manipulating information associated with their actions or products. Improved scientific and rhetorical literacy could be used to render them less effective, depending on the audience targeted, and ultimately allow for the protection of both environmental health and public health more generally.

Examines the portrayals of platelet rich plasma (PRP), which has become increasingly popular in the past decade for treating sports-related musculoskeletal injuries, in English-language newspapers published in Australia, Canada, Ireland, NZ, the UK, and the USA. Argues that while news media coverage of PRP exhibits very few common hallmarks of hype, its portrayal as a routine treatment used by elite athletes and celebrities creates an implicit hype which can contribute to public misunderstandings of the efficacy of PRP. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.

Models of evolution of simple languages have typically assumed full alignment of the speaker and listeners interests, with perfect understanding representing the optimal outcome for both parties. In more realistic settings, communicating individuals will often desire different outcomes from one another. Previous work has shown that misalignment of speaker-listener interests reduces the maximum informativeness among Nash-equilibrium languages, and that multiple equilibrium languages (with different degrees of informativeness) are supported. We study the stochastic evolutionary dynamics of signaling games in which the alignment of speaker-listener interests can vary. We find that increased misalignment of speaker-listener interests is associated with a decrease in information transmission. Moreover, the most common languages to evolve are typically the most informative languages supportable as static Nash equilibria, suggesting a solution to the ‘equilibrium selection problem’. In addition, our dynamics reveal the mechanism by which less informative languages evolve: words that previously signaled intense states come to be used hyperbolically for less intense states, with listeners’ interpretation of these newly-ambiguous words evolving downward in response. We ground our results in linguistic data on intensifiers such as so and very , words which have unique dynamics—with constant recycling and innovation that match our theoretical results well.

This study investigates the representation of Qatar isolation by Arab Quartet in selected USA editorials, i.e., it is represented positively or negatively. Those editorials involve The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. It explores the role of editorials in moulding, shaping and reshaping of ideology. It tries to find out the hidden ideologies in discourse of these editorials. The study follows a multidisciplinary approach of CDA starting with an overview of CDA shedding light on its roots, critical meaning, It focuses on the theory of ideology giving its definitions, its history, its structure and forms, as well as the mechanisms through which it works. The present study adopts an eclectic model of van Dijk (1991) and Fairclough (1989) which deploys linguistically three different tools to analyze (56) selected texts of the editorials. These tools include syntactic modality, semantic presupposition and stylistic hyperbole. The results reveal that Qatar isolation is represented negatively rather than positively, which means that editors view Qatar and the U.S as one group ideology and Arab Quartet as its opposite ideology. This indicates the U.S underlying ideology and ideological reverberations such as hegemony, dominance and superiority. It also verifies van Dijk\"s (1991) and Fairclough\" (1989) model as a powerful tool within CDA to reveal hidden ideologies and ideological mechanisms.

1 Th. 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing. Many have worried that praying without ceasing seems impossible. Most address the problem by giving an account of the true nature of prayer. Unexplored are strategies for dealing with the problem that are neutral on the nature of prayer, strategies consistent, for example, with the view that only petition is prayer. In this article, after clarifying the nature of the problem for praying without ceasing, I identify and explore the prospects of five different strategies that are neutral in this sense. I also raise problems for each strategy.

There is scholarly debate on whether digital political participation influence decision-making or merely make citizens feel good. Using digital public sphere theory and play, this article explores political participation on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe. The study applies a qualitative content analysis on tweets as it answers questions: does perspective by media users in a health crisis exert political change and in what way does play on digital spheres induce participation for gratification purposes? The findings of the study reflect the use of conspiratorial satire, hyperbole, and propaganda in the COVID-19 pandemic as media users laugh at poor health infrastructure, corruption and authoritarianism. We argue that netizens’ political participation on social media is somehow overrated for it has not generated meaningful change in non-democratic context but gives the media user, a sense of gratification for scoffing at the ruling regime.

This study compared the sentence hyperbole comprehension performance of Chinese poor readers with various levels of arithmetic proficiency. A total of 168 Chinese poor readers in Grade 1 were recruited, and their nonverbal intelligence, verbal working memory, Chinese receptive vocabulary, Chinese grammatical knowledge, character reading and morphological awareness were controlled. The reaction times of these students in correctly answering literal and inferential questions was selected for further comparison. Results of a mixed-effect model analysis show that the participants with good and poor arithmetic proficiency levels demonstrated similar levels of literal information comprehension, regardless of the presentation form of the quantifier construction that was built by the quantifier location of the sentences, the number of numeric characters in a single quantifier and the hyperbole function applied in the sentence quantifier. Students with good arithmetic proficiency also demonstrated faster response in comprehending quantifier inferential information. Primary school students with good arithmetic proficiency outperformed those with poor proficiency in the inferential reading of verbal numeric information. In addition, differences in arithmetic proficiency did not significantly affect the students’ word/character semantic representation cognition and shallow literal information processing. Overall, the results distinguish the interaction and independent numerical information processes at the literal and inferential levels of text quantifier comprehension for young primary school students with poor reading proficiency.

The article investigates hyperboles as a persuasion tool in British political discourse. The corpus under analysis comprises scripts of speeches by UK Permanent Representative to the UN Karen Pierce, Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson which are devoted to the incident in Salisbury. The research has shown that to describe the event under study the politicians use rhetoric devices that exaggerate its social and political importance. In political discourse hyperboles have an impact on three modes of persuasion – logos, pathos and ethos, but in political communication the effectiveness of a hyperbole as a persuasion tool mainly depends on ethos, i.e. conditions of a speech act which determine the relevance of this rhetorical device and a speaker's personality. In some statements hyperboles are so efficiently embedded the communicative context that they are interpreted literally. In political discourse persuasion is often implemented through the use of hyperboles and other rhetorical devices (analogy, alliteration, anaphora, climax). The evocative character of hyperbole is key to the implementation of its persuasive function in political discourse. Under the influence of the representations evoked by hyperbole, the object of exaggerated description acquires characteristics which quantitatively and, in some cases, qualitatively differ from its real properties.