SASL Executive Board
2019 – 2022
President
Samuel J. Supalla
University of Arizona
[email protected]
Vice President
(vacant)
Recording Secretary /
Newsletter Editor
Andrew P. J. Byrne
University at Buffalo
[email protected]
Treasurer
Harvey Nathanson
Austin Community College
[email protected]
SASL Journal
Editor-in-Chief
Jody H. Cripps
Clemson University
[email protected]
Board Directors
Karen Alkoby
Gallaudet University
[email protected]
Gabriel Arellano
Georgetown University
[email protected]
Ron Fenicle
Montgomery College
[email protected]
Russell Rosen
CUNY – Staten Island
[email protected]
The Power of ASL
By Andrew P. J. Byrne
Unpacking the Literary Device of
H y p e r b o l e
In the previous issue, I wrote about what constitutes
ASL literature and discussed the concept of defamiliarization,
which is the intended aesthetic effect of a literary work and
which is made possible through the use of literary devices.
The successful defamiliarization that I discussed in regard to
Ben Bahan's work, Bird of a Different Feather achieves “the
essential condition of art…that it is the effect produced by
nearly all artistic techniques [literary devices]” (Shklovsky,
1917/1965, as cited in Gunn, 1984, p. 27). Numbering more
than one hundred devices (Frissora, 2017; Rasinski, Zutell, &
Smith, 2017), some examples that can be found in ASL
narratives and poems are rhyme, rhythm, metaphor,
symbolism, imagery, foreshadowing, caricature, hyperbole,
and onomatopoeia. For this issue, my focus is on hyperbole.
What I will do is provide two video examples to demonstrate
how hyperbole is used in the narratives by Nathie Marbury
and Mary Beth Miller, two of the best-known ASL performers
in the United States. The respective narratives are Hearing
Aids & Headphones in her DVD entitled Nathie: No Hand-Me-
Downs (2005) and New York, New York in her DVD called
Live at SMI!: Mary Beth Miller (1991/2010). This will be the
first in the series for the newsletter on the analysis of literary
devices used in the narratives and poems of ASL.
Hyperbole has a long tradition that goes back to the
time of ancient Greece. Aristotle, the well-known Greek
philosopher, might be the first to draw our attention to
hyperbole (Freese, 1926; McCarthy & Carter, 2004). All
literatures in the world include hyperbole (McFadden, 2012).
It is clearly reassuring to know that the literature of ASL has
its own hyperbole. Baldick (2008) defines hyperbole as an
“exaggeration for the sake of emphasis in a figure of speech
not meant literally” (p. 161). It is “an extreme exaggeration
used when making a point” (Keli, 2016, p. 1). It is also
“supposed to be either for serious or ironic or comic effect”
(Ruban & Backiavathy, 2016, p. 59). In John Smith’s book
entitled Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvaild (1657), he identifies
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Summer 2019 – Issue 14