two kinds of hyperbole: auxesis (the exaggerated expansion of an entity) and meiosis (the
exaggerated reduction of it) (as cited in McCarthy & Carter, 2004).
Although people unconsciously use hyperbole in their everyday conversations (e.g., “I have
been waiting for ages!” or “Your bag weighs a ton!”), it is still significantly understudied, in
comparison to other literary devices such as metaphor and irony (Claridge, 2011). To the best of my
knowledge, the study and discussion of hyperbole in the field of ASL/Deaf Studies is non-existent
except for a PowerPoint presentation by Linda Wall and Shelley Potma in 2010 in Ontario, Canada.
Wall and Potma are the first to draw our attention to hyperbole used in a literary work and to refer to
Nathie Marbury’s work as an example.
I will now discuss what exactly Marbury did with hyperbole as a literary device. In her narrative
as an elementary student at a school for the deaf, Marbury recollected the absurdity and oppressive
climate of the oralist days. This includes her experience wearing headphones connected to an
amplification box in front of her desk and watching her teacher speak into a microphone. The sounds
her teacher produced were unintelligible and caused her to feel like bugs crawling inside and around
her ears. During the process of moving one of the headphones away from her ear to scratch the
tickle, an eerie sound was made and her teacher told her to put the headphone back on. The
headphone was clasped over her head so tightly that she felt like she was being crushed flat. The
crushing very much applies to one kind of hyperbole: meiosis (the exaggerated reduction of an
entity). Below is Marbury’s video to give you an idea of how she effectively used hyperbole in her
narrative:
“Reproduced with permission from Alberta Stewart, Nathie Marbury’s oldest daughter – June 2019”
Source: Marbury, N. (2005). Nathie: No hand-me-downs [DVD]. Minneapolis, MN: Tactile Mind Press.
Mary Beth Miller’s narrative, New York, New York serves as the second example of
hyperbole. Within Miller's narrative, there are several sub-topics and I will focus on one that talks
about a female ballet dancer. In Miller’s comical description, the dancer’s whole body is so wrapped
up like a mummy that if she were to be unwrapped, her face and torso would become droopy in an
exaggerated and impossible way. According to Claridge (2011), it is common for people like Miller to
have an urge “to magnify things and not to be satisfied with (the description of) things as they really
are” (p. 1). The over-laxing of the ballet dancer’s face and torso fits another kind of hyperbole well:
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The Power of ASL
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Summer 2019 – Issue 14