Beyond reported speech, hyperbole, and irony: the hidden complexity and functional diversity of echoic language

This paper advances the study of echoic language by demonstrating its greater structural complexity and functional breadth than is commonly recognized. Based on examples found in a naturally occurring exchange of comments on an online blog about the strangler fig, we analyse a text underpinning a multilayered network of echoes. The productivity of these novel echoic categories is validated through additional naturally running examples from diverse Internet sources. While commonly associated with reported speech and irony, echoes also facilitate discourse cohesion, assert stance, and bolster persuasive arguments. Our conceptual framework expands upon existing typologies of echoic configurations by positing two further patterns: dual-source echoic compounding, whereby two dissimilar echoes—one denotational and the other attitudinal—are integrated within a single syntagmatic slot; and echoic amalgams, which entail the convergence of two related, implicit echoes into one inferentially rich unit. A new category of hyperbole, the compound hyperbolic construction, is also proposed. Finally, our analysis empirically substantiates the existence of a multifunctional echo governing the interplay of five distinct phenomena (fictive motion, metonymy, metaphor, irony, and oxymoron), thereby surpassing the complexity of previously documented composites. The present findings motivate a more comprehensive framework capable of encompassing the pervasive implicitness, structural heterogeneity, and functional versatility of echoing. We present echoic amalgams, dual-source compounded echoes, and compound hyperbolic constructions as productive typological categories, providing complementary replicable diagnostic criteria and explicit predictions to assist in identifying potential instances in large-scale corpus studies across genres and languages. • Echoic amalgams and dual-source compounded echoes as new echoic configurations. • Hyperbole can be echoic via composite “X not Y but Z” constructions. • A new category of hyperbole is proposed: the compound hyperbolic construction. • The first attested five-component multi-operational echo is provided. • A replicable protocol and diagnostic criteria for identifying echoes and their functions.