In science, to be ‘conservative’ is to understate your findings. In insurance, it means the opposite: erring on the side of overstatement of risks. For a clear assessment of the risks of climate change, we need these two cultures to meet in the middle. This requires a separation of tasks: between those who gather information, and those who assess risk.

This chapter examines the possibility that hyperbole and understatement are distinct notions and not necessarily under the superordinate concept of irony. Hyperbole relates to exaggeration or overstatement, while understatements are viewed as scalar shifts that are quite the opposite of hyperbole (i.e., presenting something as less significant than it is). She examines empirical evidence on the discourse goals associated with irony, hyperbole, and understatement to suggest that irony is frequently a part of hyperbole and understatement (e.g., to achieve the goals of contrast, expectations, and indeterminacy), but can exist on its own (e.g., to achieve the goal of an ironic attitude through evaluation accounts, negative-attitude accounts, and dissociative-attitude accounts). Both hyperbole and understatement are also evaluative, but not necessarily in an ironic way. Most generally, understatement and hyperbole may share common mechanisms with irony, yet are still important rhetorical figures in their own right.

In science, to be ‘conservative’ is to understate your findings. In insurance, it means the opposite: erring on the side of overstatement of risks. For a clear assessment of the risks of climate change, we need these two cultures to meet in the middle. This requires a separation of tasks: between those who gather information, and those who assess risk.

Chapter 1 looks at the range of figurative language types that can be found in advertising, discusses how and why they are used creatively and reports findings from studies that have explored the relative advantages of different combinations of metaphor and metonymy. It introduces key concepts such as metaphor, hyperbole, understatement, metonymy, and illustrates how they work alone and in combination in effective advertising. The chapter then explores ways of exploiting the creative potential of figurative messaging. These include the use of personification, shock tactics, anaphoric reference, innuendo, and narrative structure. Finally, it shows how figurative language can be used effectively in advertisements to convey humour and irony.