Hyperboles not turning to metaphors: How to explain audience cooperativeness?

Abstract

We observe that an audience attempts to interpret the relation between a source domain and a target domain as a hyperbole before interpreting it as a metaphor. It could also first try a metaphorical reading or attempt several possible readings and successively select the relevant outcome. But it does not. This is exactly as the rhetor anticipates. In this article a hypothetical model is developed to explain this remarkable cooperativeness, also explaining why the rhetor could anticipate this behaviour by the audience. The explanation is based on (1) ordering types of comparisons on a scale from rational mapping between moderately similar domains up to associative mapping between very different domains, and (2) assuming a general principle that interpretation is a process of developing hypotheses. This process runs from more restricted hypotheses to less restricted hypotheses until an equilibrium is reached between text coherence, foreknowledge, and perceived rhetorical situation.