The last word from the East: Chinese whispers
Barney LoehnisOgilvy & Mather
Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device. It may be used to stir passion and create a strong impression, but is not meant to be, though it often is, taken literally. It is easily abused.
Chinese literature such as Journey to the West– especially Communist propaganda – is full of hyperbole; its writers have always used the power of 'big' to evoke emotion and hypnotise its audiences into a zone of suspended reality. There's a quotient of complicity in the audience that...