Magtymguly, the great poet and thinker of the Turkmen people, has brought glory to the Turkmen people for almost three hundred years due to his name and unmatched literary heritage. Our high respect for him as a poet, and for his role in the history of the Turkmen people and its socio-political, cultural and literary life, is everlasting. Magtymguly bequeathed the people’s soul with the greatest faith; the Turkmen mind with the most accurate whetstone to differentiate good and evil in life; and the eyes of Turkmen with unquenchable radiance.
Stylistics is one of the main factors in studying language. Using only stylistic materials is not enough to learn stylistic devices at the period of stylistic lesson of any language, but also materials from the literature must be used. Doing stylistic analyses on literary texts will give great opportunity to learn the given material easily.
One of the main devices in stylistics is hyperbole. It is one of the most widely used and important stylistic devices, which is used even in ancient literature. Hyperboles can be met not only in literary texts, but also in everyday speech of any language.
Hyperbole is used when the author tries to underline something by exaggerating it. In other words hyperbole has the role of exaggeration of events, power, size and importance of something.
Linguistic features of hyperboles, their role of functioning in speech is one of the main problems in language studies. Study of hyperbole and other stylistic devices lead the analysis of individual style of writer and poets, the meaning of the work written by them. Scientific researches and works have been doing by scientist for a long time; among them A.Potebnaya, I.Arnold, A.Vinogradov, I.Galperin, I.Kurakhtanova, L.Krysin, L.Syrowatkina, S.Tihomirov did very much in their scientific researches.
The term hyperbole has a long history going back to Aristotle, and features throughout the historiography of rhetoric. In Smith’s Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvaild, for example, hyperbole is defined as: ‘‘when the trope is exceedingly enlarged, or when the change of signification is very high and lofty, or when in advancing or repressing one speaks much more than is precisely true, yea above all belief’’. [5]
As it is already said main subject of the hyperbole is exaggeration. So the information which is used as the subject of the hyperbole can be not true, but this information is just used to exaggerate something, to underline its importance. Let’s show the role of hyperbole by one sentence: «I said you forty times to clean your room», so as it is said in sentence may be its not true that he said it forty times, but by this way (by using exaggeration) he means the importance of cleanliness of the room.
Hyperboles are widely used in belles-lettres styles, the style used by literary writers. From the ancient times Aristotle used hyperbole and paid attention to this style as it is more productive in influencing the reader.
Great Turkmen poet Mahtymkuli was also the master of writing poems. His poems were full of meaning for those were translated into many languages. In his poem «The Land of Turkmen» we meet such lines:
When souls, hearts and minds of tribes are united,
Their troops when gathered will melt stones
and ground on their way, [3]
In the second line in the phrase «will melt stones» he used hyperbole. Of course it is not possible to melt the stones without special tools, but by writing such phrase he tries to explain the power of unity.
King Solomon, brave Rüstem u Zal, King Jemshit — all wanted to conquer it,
No Shah’s evil will damage it even when an army of a hundred thousand soldiers assault daily. [16]
As it can be seen from the lines Mahtumkuli again uses hyperbole, this time he uses the hyperboles which are formed from part of speech of numbers, so the word «hundred thousand» isn’t the exact information, though poet tries to show the great amount of soldiers by using hyperbole.
Again there we see example of hyperboles in his poem, which denote amount and number:
To defend its honor, the tribes of Goklen and Yomut
Gathered such an army, that no one knows where it begins or ends [21],
writing the word «where it begins or ends» Mahtumkuli shows the amount of army in battle using hyperboles in artistic way.
You are the lion, longing for a hunt in the forests,
You are the brain of the Byzantine Empire, one of the giants,
You are the one who can withstand the arrow of the son of Zal,
You are known to the misfortunate like the son of Gushtasp . [31]
Here are also examples of hyperboles such as lion, brain which are out of possibility but with these words he tries to show how the this Person is great.
Hyperbole is a trope in which an exaggerated term is used for emphasis or effect. Abrams and Harpham state that «The figure of speech, or trope, called hyperbole (Greek for «overshooting») is bold overstatement, or the extravagant exaggeration of fact or of possibility. It may be used either for serious or ironic or comic effect.» [1]
By reading literary works from English literature we also meet hyperboles used by British writers. For instance the most flamboyant of the English Romantic poets, George Gordon, Lord Byron also used hyperbole in his poems. He created heroes in his poems, also could describe events using stylistic devices.
«The river nobly foams and flows,
The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round» [2]
Carolling the beauty of the nature he uses hyperbole by saying «thousand turns». He uses here exaggeration to convey the emotionality to the reader which is one of the main functions of the hyperbole.
Such type of exaggeration also can be met in these lines by Robert Burns (A Red, Red Rose):
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till the seas gang dry.
Till the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt with the sun; [4]
Here in order to show perpetuity of the love, he uses logically unreal hyperboles: «till the seas gang dry» and «the rocks melt with the sun» . It is masterpiece by Robert Burns in which he focuses on power of the love by using hyperboles.
Hyperbole play great role not only in literature, but also in rhetoric. Many famous politicians use hyperbole to influence their audience, and there we understand how it is important in speech.
References:
- Abrams M. and Harpham G. A Glossary of Literary Terms (9th edition). Washington, USA: Wodsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. p.149.
- Lord Byron. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Chicago: W.B Conkey company Publishers, 1900. 156 p.
- Magtymguly. Poems. To the 290 years of anniversary of the poet. Ashgabat: Turkmen State Publishing Service, 2014. p. 89.
- Robert Burns. Selected Poems. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner-CO., Ltd. p. 1896. 167 p.
- Smith John. The Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvaild. London: Printed by E. Cotes for George Everzden, etc. 1657. 53 p.
- Magtymguly. Poems from Turkmenistan. Copyright © 2014 Asian Cultural History Program, Smithsonian Institution in association with the National Institute of Manuscripts, Turkmenistan Academy of Sciences. 2014.
