The goal of this paper is to analyse the role played by irony, litotes and hyperbole in humour. Its theoretical perspective is that of discourse analysis. It studies the different forms of irony in journalistic texts as well as their relation with litotes. It also studies the forms and functions of hyperbole, depending on whether it magnifies the positive or the negative. Furthermore, it proposes to divide the figures of speech analysed in this paper into three broad categories of polyphonic play : parody, irony and caricature. The paper takes its examples from a sample of newspaper columns published in the French newspaper le Monde between 2000 and 2003 and between 2006 and 2009.