Evolutionary dynamics of hyperbolic language
Fig 6
The life cycle of intensifiers, with empirical examples.
(a): Most hyperbolic language originates as factual, indicative language that is then re-purposed (“de-lexicalization”, shown in green) as a figurative device. Once a word has “used up” its hyperbolic value, it decreases in usage and is supplanted either by a new bleached word or, frequently, by an older hyperbolic term whose loss of value has been forgotten by the current generation (a process called “recycling”, shown in blue). When words fall below a certain threshold of use without being recycled, they are lost from the language (red). (b): The rise and fall of swithe, the original English intensifer, from its de-lexicalization from the adjective swith meaning “strong” through its peak in early Middle English until its loss from the language. Data drawn from a large corpus of poetry and prose [54]. (c): The “revival” of intensifying well. Teal bars show the average usage of well as an intensifier among competing intensifiers from the 10th to the 17th century in the same corpus as (b). The red point represents the television show The Inbetweeners, where its social context of use may represent a much longer vernacular use not reflected in the literary record [55]. (d): Recycling in a particular speech community. The frequency of usage of the four main intensifiers in Toronto when grouped by age of speakers shows that different intensifiers dominate in different sub-communities, with terms unused by an older group (such as really) being recycled into the dominant intensifier by a younger generation [51]. (e): A novel example of de-lexicalization. We collected instances of football players “giving X% effort” from eight major British periodicals, where X is a number greater than 100. The numbers 110, 120, 130, and 140 are introduced in sequence and increase in frequency thereafter, though all continue to be used once they have been introduced. (f): A sub-corpus of (e) focusing on a single coach (Antonio Conte). We show that the population-level trends are often driven by verbose, innovative individuals, who also preserve older intensifiers at low frequencies in the lexicon.