Having your cake, eating it and losing the (p)lot : the combination of proverb, hyperbole and sarcasm in (and about) Brexiters’ discourses

Abstract

Can the use of rhetorical devices designed to achieve persuasion, such as metaphor, irony, proverb and hyperbole, be too persuasive, i.e., overshoot the communicative aims of the speaker? More specifically, can the combination of such devices be ‘too much of a good thing’ because it commits speakers (and their followers) to actions that they were not fully aware of when first launching/propagating them? This paper investigates the socio-pragmatic development of Brexit-related applications of the metaphorical proverb, ‘You cannot have your cake and eat it’, during 2016-2021 in British public discourse. At the start, the proverb’s reversal into the assertion ‘We will have our cake and eat it!’ by the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and other « Brexiters » became a highly prominent endorsement of Brexit and it temporarily set the agenda for the public perception of the UK-EU negotiations. Its prominence also gave rise to neologisms such as cakeism and cakeist. However, over time it has become an object of derision and has led to sarcastic re-reversals.