Puns

Structure

Puns involve two senses: S1 and S2.
-senses must be opposed and cannot be random
-senses must be present at the same time

“This entails that the hearer will have to revise his/her representation of the world.”

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Taxonomies of puns (according to linguistics):

1. By linguistic phenomenon
2. By linguistic structure
3. By phonemic distance
4. Eclectic – “most taxonomies show some degree of eclecticism….they incorporate elements that properly belong to other types of taxonomy.”

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NOGUEZ Taxonomy of Puns:

I. Homonymy
A. Homophony
i. Between different words
ii. Two or more words
iii. A simple word with a composed one
iv. one word with a group of two or more words
v. two groups of words
B. Homography
C. Paronymy

II. Polysemy

III. Antonymy

IV. Morphemic Attraction

V. Tendency to Motivation

VI. Contamination

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Types of Puns:

1. Paradigmatic Puns – involve two senses of a linguistic expression… Only one of the two strings is actually present in the text and the second has to be retrieved by the hearer from his/her storage of homonomic or paronymic strings.

2. Syntagmatic Puns – require the presence of the second element in the linguistic string.

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What are the boundaries of a pun?

Measuring phonemic distance

-”Two words differing in two features in two different phenomes will be perceived as more distant than two words different by two features in the same phenome.”

-”Sound differences located in initial or final position should be weighted ‘heavier’ than sound differences in medial positions.” (Bathtub effect)

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Possible classification of the quality of puns:
-”The best puns are those in which either the two senses coexist in a difficult balance, or in which the connotating sense brings a meaningful contribution to the global senses of the text.”

-”MARINO hypothesized the value of puns could be judged on the basis of the relationships between the scripts evoked by the puns and the context in which they occur.”

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Visual puns
-The only difference is the “type of sign involved.”

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Misc. rules

Puns based on alliteration
-do not fit connector/disjunctor dichotomy
-”diffused” because the pun consists of the repetition of sounds