auxesis (the exaggerated expansion of an entity). Below is Miller’s video that indicates the effective
usage of hyperbole in her sub-narrative:
“Reproduced with permission from Sign Media, Inc.”
Source: Miller, M. B. (1991/2010). Live at SMI!: Mary Beth Miller [DVD]. Burtonsville, MD: Sign Media, Inc.
I also need to say that tall tales and hyperbole commonly go hand in hand in the literary world.
One of the most popular American tall tales is Paul Bunyan, a lumberjack of massive stature with
immense power and strength. The Bunyan tale makes use of hyperbole to establish Bunyan’s
physical characteristics and abilities. “In a tall tale, details about the setting are less important than
details about the character’s adventures or how the main character looks and acts” (Barden, 2003, p.
23). Interestingly, ASL literature has something similar. In the summer 2018 issue of this newsletter, I
talked about Martina (MJ) Bienvenu’s 1980 folkloristic work entitled Don’t Sign with Your Hands Full
and its seven other videotaped versions. Bienvenu's work and similar renditions by other performers
are about a giant or rather King Kong. Both characters are of gigantic stature and size, which serve
as an example of hyperbole, an exaggeration that is preposterous, everyone knows it could not
possibly be true.
In comparison to the devices of rhyme, rhythm, metaphor, and symbolism used in ASL literary
works, especially poems, hyperbole is very seriously understudied. I hope my own writing here will
lead to a greater awareness about hyperbole as a literary device for ASL literature. This includes
generating a strong interest among newsletter readers in understanding about many other literary
devices in use as well.
References
Baldick, C. (2008). The Oxford dictionary of literary terms. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Barden, C. (2003). Student booster: Writing fiction. Quincy, IL: Mark Twain Media, Inc.
Claridge, C. (2011). Hyperbole in English: A corpus-based study of exaggeration. New York, NY: Cambridge University
Press.
Freese, J. H. (1926). Aristotle: The “art” of rhetoric. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
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The Power of ASL
4
Summer 2019 – Issue 14