ABSTRACT
This chapter considers resources open to speakers, including figures such as metaphors, idioms and hyperbole. Metaphor is one of the most extensively discussed figures of speech and is often bracketed with metonymy for purposes of classification and for comparison of functions and effects. Simile is very closely related to metaphor; in fact, one definition of metaphor is that it is an elliptical simile and that for specific communicative reasons simile involves the explicit signalling of comparison between one thing and another. The human and discourse context of language use is inherent in the joint construction of discourse goals and in the use of metaphor to achieve those goals. The chapter discuses the notion of core vocabulary is basic to the argument as there are clines from core to non-core vocabulary. Hyperbole operates along clines of intensity, evaluation and intimacy but is most marked in operation along an intensity scale.
