Экзамен по стилистике Stylistics as a science and style as a main stylistic category

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.