Abstract
This chapter highlights “that which a speaker is particularly concerned to deny” (as well as its denial) as preeminent in hyperbole. Often this denial is a forceful portrayal of a speaker’s attitude toward what is being denied, resulting in a gap between what is said and what is meant. In examples involving you always and you never, speakers put their attitude on display by the rhetorical strategy they employ, and particularly by their choice of what they choose to deny and contrast. This offers a window on one way that exaggeration is employed in hyperbole, through what speakers choose to deny, and the attitude which informs that decision. Additional examples are looked at, with a focus on the strategies employed in production and comprehension in denying some salient feature of the conversational context. Emphasis is given to speaker’s attitude in producing hyperbole.