The Study Of Hyperbole

The use of overstatement is to meet the needs of emotional expression and discription of deviation and surpass of things to give prominence to image and to glamorize emotions. It is based on the writer's rich imaginaton and reality to overstate or understate the image of characters quality or extent. In Chinese rhetorical device, overstatement is widely used and have a long historical and cultual heritage. Yet for various reasons, currently weakness of the research of overstatement exists in academia, therefore it is of great significance to conduct a research related to it. The author, after absorbing the previous research and analyzing large amounts of texts of overstatement, conducts a comprehensive examination into overstatement.The preface deals with the objectives and implications of overstatement research, the pectinaton of its current situationin academia, generalization of its flaws as well as the related questions the present paper aims to answer.Chapter one explores the clasification and semantic features of overstatement. Overstatement can be classified according to different perspectives and different standards. It can be divided into overpitching, underpitching and advancing overstatement by the standard of meaning;pure and fused overstatement by component standard;light, medium, high and fake overstatement by the extent of overstatement. The semantic features of overstatement includes the exageration of things , image and point. The analysis of semantic shows there are two patterns of overstatement,namely empty overstatement and overstatement of entity overstatement, no matter what pattern it is, overstatement is the prominence of image overstated of the semantic features of the things overstated,between which there exists a gap. The role of overstatement is to give prominence to the essensial features by using this reasonable gap.Chapter two investigates the actuality and psychological basis of overstatement. It is pointed out that overstatement is the speaker's creatively displaying of the characteristics of objects.Overstatement is from ,above and beyond reality,which resutls in the unity of actuality and artistic reality and leads to the creation of real aesthetics This chapter expounds on the psycological basis of overstatements which is the rich imagination driven by emotion, because overstated language is accompied by fiecre emotional activities to surpass the ordianry language This results in the differences between sentence meaning and actual happenings, which forces the readers to go through certain coginion to grasp the real meaning expressed.However this cognitive process is based on imagination (surely association included).Chapter three elabarates on the use principle and artistic charm of overstatement. It is pointed out that the use of overstatement should be apparent, temperant, novel and consistent with the context. As an inseperable part of language communication, overstatement has special artistic charm of its own. It can create the beauty of imago , refective reaciton, nobility and comedy.Chapter four summarizes the above parts and points out the implications of the present research.