Hyperbole and litota and their functions in the headlines of the regional newspaper „Gazeta Pomorska”

Abstract

The paper focues on the analysis of article headlines published in the local newspaper “Gazeta Pomorska”, in particular with regard to figures of speech like hyperbole and its opposite. Conventionalised metaphors (related to war, fight, nightmare, disaster, fear, illness) allow for creation of hyperbolic headlines. Military metaphors constitute the most numerous group where reality is presented as a battlefield (for example description of a purchase, African swine fever, election campaign, protest, road accidents, sport). Whereas, litotes is not only depicted by figures of speech such as personification, comparison, but also irony, colloquialisms and intersexuality. Although the material was extracted from a regional journal the analysis indicated that there are 43 percent more examples of general Polish headlines in the pages of “Gazeta Pomorska” with the use of hyperbole and litotes than those of regional origin. The analysis suggests that headlines of regional articles are frequently purely informative in nature without rhetorical aspects.