"Bigger, much bigger, massively much bigger": a comparative study of hyperbole in business and economics lectures

Hyperbole is a common feature of everyday conversation through which speakers exaggerate reality for affective and evaluative purposes. Hyperbolic uses of certain lexico-grammatical items have also been found in academic speech, where they might have been less expected. Continuing in this direction, this study investigates hyperbole in university lectures in the fields of business and economics. These disciplines are typically associated with empirical data and methodological precision, which could constrain hyperbole. Yet today’s academic lectures have become increasingly conversation-like, which could instead favour hyperbole. This potential mismatch renders business and economics lectures particularly interesting for an in-depth study of this form of figurative language. Using techniques from corpus linguistics, three types of hyperbole were investigated in six business lectures and six economics lectures: extreme adjectives and adverbs (e.g., huge, absolutely, never), overgeneralization (e.g., everybody, no one) and numerical exaggeration (e.g., millions, loads, tonnes). Follow-up qualitative analysis was performed to gain insights into the patterning and functions of hyperbole in these disciplinary settings. Although not in high frequencies, extreme adjectives and adverbs were found across both corpora, while overgeneralization and especially numerical exaggeration were relatively infrequent. The use of hyperbole in the two corpora was linked to various discourse functions including emphasis, persuasion, humour, criticism and irony. The findings can be implemented towards developing more effective teaching methods and materials that raise awareness among non-native speakers of English of how hyperbole may be used by business and economics lecturers.