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英语论文The Retorical Means and Functions of Puns in English Literature
The Rhetorical Means and Functions of Puns in English Literature
Introduction
Language, the ship of ideology, is a tool for human communication, on which people rely and enrich by creativeness during their social activities. Paronomasia, or just call it pun in an informal way, in nature, a world-play. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘pun’ did not appear in English language until 1662 with Dryden; yet this word-play as a practice has been found in English literature since earliest times. In English language, there are many words that are pronounced alike or spelt alike, or both. A pun, in essence, is an ambiguity. A pun involves the use of a polysemous word to suggest two or more meanings, commonly literal meaning versus figurative meaning, or involves the use of homonyms, i.e. different words which look or sound the same but have different meanings. The whole point of a pun is the user’s intent to produce a humorous or witty effect from the juxtaposition of meanings. As a unique phenomenon of language using, puns are rhetorical means of using words and phrases which contain two different ideas, conceptions, things or emotions at the same time, making the sentence include different meanings.
There is a famous example from the Linguistics Master Noam Chomsky: Flying planes can be dangerous.
a. Sentence = Noun Phrase (Someone flies planes) + Verb Phrase (can be dangerous)
b. Sentence = Noun Phrase (Planes fly) + Verb Phrase (can be dangerous)
In English, the very concentrate occasion of puns is in the literature. It is very early that pun shows up, when it turns to the Shakespeare’s era, the using of this phraseology in literature has in its period of great prosperity. According to a statistics, puns in his works have reached an amount of 3000. Many writers like to use it, treat it as a serious, graceful, high-ranking art with plenty of lingering charm.
In Webster’s New World Dictionary, pun is defined as: The humorous use of a word, or of wor
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