Exaggerating and mitigating through metonymy: The case of situational and CAUSE FOR EFFECT/EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymies

By analysing the underlying cognitive operations, the aim of this paper is to go beyond previous research in order to demonstrate how some cases of understatement and overstatement can be explained via metonymies in a systematic way. We shall show how (1) situational metonymies that stand for an initial/final stage in a given scenario, and (2) CAUSE FOR EFFECT and EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymies respectively (the latter complemented by metaphors, similes, or other mechanisms that generate hyperbolic effects) may contribute to the creation of understatement and overstatement.