THE PRAGMATIC FUNCTIONS OF HYPERBOLE IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Abstract
In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital communication, hyperbole has become one of the most frequently used figurative devices on social media platforms. This study examined the pragmatic functions of hyperbole in online discourse, aiming to understand how exaggeration serves as a dynamic tool for meaning construction, emotional expression, and interpersonal interaction in constrained digital environments. A mixed-methods approach was employed, involving the compilation of a corpus of 4,850 hyperbolic instances collected from X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok between 2024 and 2025. Data were analyzed through qualitative pragmatic discourse analysis informed by Relevance Theory, combined with quantitative techniques including chi-square tests and logistic regression. The results revealed that hyperbole primarily functions as emotional intensification (42.3%), humor enhancement (28.7%), and sarcasm signaling (19.5%), with significant platform-specific patterns: sarcasm dominated on X, emotional amplification on Instagram, and humor on TikTok. Multimodal cues such as hashtags and emojis were found to strongly influence pragmatic interpretation. This study concludes that hyperbole operates as a flexible, context-sensitive pragmatic resource that enables efficient stance-taking and relevance optimization in social media. The findings contribute to pragma-stylistics and digital pragmatics by bridging traditional figurative language research with contemporary online communication practices and offer practical implications for digital literacy, content moderation, and sentiment analysis tools.
Keywords
hyperbole, pragmatic functions, social media discourse, figurative language, digital pragmatics, sarcasm, emotional intensification, Relevance Theory, multimodal cues, platform differences.How to Cite
References
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Copyright (c) 2026 Dilafza Bozorova
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