免费英语论文范文(2)
In the practice of the advertising English, people pay more attention to pun to make the advertisement succinct, accurate and vivid and to provide rich imagination and plentiful associations for readers so as to stimulate their desire.The frequent and wide use of figures of speech is an important characteristic of advertising English, which is an effective way to make the advertisement attractive. Among the figures, pun is loved deeply. Oxford Advanced Dictionary defines pun as “humorous use of a word that has two meanings or of different words that sound the same” [1]. A pun (also known as paronomasia) can be understood like that it is a deliberate confusion of similar-sounding words of phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. It leaves a deep impression on readers by its readability, wit and humor. It can satisfy the requirement of advertisement characteristics—selling power, memory value, attention value, and readability. So pun is very popular in advertisement. The article just wants to present the pragmatic function and translatability of pun in advertisement.
1 Definition and classification of pun in advertisement
1. 1 Definition of pun
Looking at the same issue from different perspectives, we may often come up with different definitions of the thing under discussion. And, not surprisingly, pun can be thus defined in many ways. There is such a humorous explanation about pun: “punning – to torture one poor word ten thousand ways (John Dryden)”. In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, pun is defined as “An amusing use of a word or phrase that has two meanings, or words with the same sound but different meanings”. According to The Oxford English Dictionary, pun is defined as “the use of word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings or different associations, or the use of two or more words of the same or nearly the same sound with different meanings, so as to produce a humorous effect”. In Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, pun is defined as “A figure of speech depending upon a similarity of sound and a disparity of meaning”. From the above definitions, we can see that homonyms, homophones, and homographs all are available to construct puns with.
