Pun With Language: The Role of the Pun Throughout the History of the World
“In his protest days, Gandhi walked everywhere. From the North of India to the South, Gandhi traveled it all, all without shoes. And he didn’t brush his teeth, either, so his breath was pretty bad. Since he walked so far and did not eat much in the way of food, he got very thin and physically weak. All in all, he was a super-calloused, fragile mystic, vexed with halitosis!”
Have you heard jokes such as this before? Jokes that cause you to groan sooner than laugh, and to hurl random objects at the utterer? Perhaps you heard them at a party somewhere, or when you were with a friend. Or even in the workplace. Such jokes are everywhere, causing even the most good-humored person to groan in agony at the cheesiness of it all. Puns, the mainstream culture labels them, because to hear them is ‘pun’ishment. But how did the concept of punmanship come about? And, more importantly, why do so many people take it upon themselves to tell these ‘shaggy dog stories’ despite such negative reinforcement (i.e. groans, thrown pillows, comments such as “You are so not funny!”, etc…)? The answers may surprise you.
An acquaintance of mine once said that "A pun is a lower form of humor, just like a bun is a lower form of bread." I think this sums up nicely the general conception of puns in modern times. Instead of patting ourselves on the back for a pun well done, we footnote the glorious tidbit of humor with the ever-insidious, “No pun intended.” But good punmanship has not always found itself on the permanent hate list of joke aficionados.
As far back as Ancient Greece, and probably before, puns were made. The most famous pun from this time is the classic translation of Jesus’ statement to Peter: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church." To an English speaking audience, this would not seem out of the ordinary at all, just another passage from the Bible without a pun in sight. But when one considers the language of one of the original translations of the Bible, Greek, the circumstances become much clearer. In Greek, the name Peter translates as ‘Petros,’ while the term rock translates as ‘petra.’ So, when those words are translated into Greek within the full context of the sentence, the sentence itself reads: “Thou art Petros and upon this petra I will build my church.
Due to the ethnocentrism of American culture and ideas, the tribal group known as the Taliban may seem like a sociological disgrace to law-abiding citizens of the United States. The Taliban is made up of Pakistanis and Afghans who are said to be the “Holy Warriors of Allah” and rigidly adhere to a set of standards set out by the prophet Mohammed himself. They are considered one of the most radical groups that exist in the world today and are looked upon as dishonorable and even appalling by less radical Muslims. However, the reality is that the group has its own culture, sociological structure, and interactions which are simply different than those of the United States.
Raskin (1985) introduces his approach as being concerned with ‘verbal humor’, but his analyses are based on all types of humor conveyed in language, that is, our ‘verbally expressed’ humor. The widely-cited general theory of verbal humor (Attardo, 1994), which we have not space to discuss here, is about humor expressed in language, not merely humor dependent on specific language devices. To complicate matters further, Norick (2004) uses non-verbal to describe jokes which cannot be effectively conveyed in written language, since they are dependent on audible material (e.g. tone of voice) or on non-linguistic devices such as gestures; ‘verbal’ jokes would then be those which can be expressed successfully in writing. In this chapter, we will stay with the terms outlined earlier: anything conveyed in language is ‘verbally expressed humor’; ‘verbal humor’ is dependent on language-specific devices, ‘referential humor’ is based solely on meaning.
It takes a great sense of humor to appreciate a great joke. I have a good sense of humor. You see, you gotta be able to appreciate the nuances; the little pieces of the joke that make it funny, without askin’ you to laugh. If you can’t do that, then that joke is gonna fall deader than a door nail right in front of you. This is why Charlie and I were such great friends; he could tell the jokes, and I could appreciate them. That’s why I called him “Punchline”. He never fuckin’ stopped bein’ funny, like that time
Taliban, a simple but harsh word to the women living in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. According to the dictionary.com, "Taliban" is a Muslim fundamentalist group that spread throughout Afghanistan and formed a government. The Taliban started abusing and killing a lot of people throughout Afghanistan just to gain control. The group started by a couple of males trying to spread the Muslim faith. They began to spread throughout Afghanistan and attracted more people to be part of their group. If people were of a different faith and did not want to change, they would get killed or severely abused. They were very sexist and abused the women a lot more then the men. Also the women had to follow a lot more rules then the men. On September 27, 1996 they took over Afghanistan's capital, Kabul's, government. The whole city was demolished and looked horrible and most of the people were living in poverty. A lot of the men had to fight the civil war against al-Qaeda, so the females did not have an income and could not feed their children. The females could not go to work or get an education after the Taliban took over. They also got severely abused if they did not follow any of the rules the Taliban set up.
In almost every society women have been oppressed at some point. Although things gave gotten better on women oppression by men is still there. In American society today, women do not make as much as men in the workplace but feminists still seek to be equal to me in every way. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, both give social critiques of the male dominated society that they are living in. While their critiques have both differences and similarities, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, not only gave this critique before “ A Rose for Emily”, but more effectively as well.
The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities is truly what feminism is. A major key principle that Donald Hall utilizes in his Feminist Analysis is that “Language, institutions, and social power structures have reflected patriarchal interests throughout much of history” (202) and that “This has had a profound impact on women’s ability to express themselves and the quality of their daily lives” (202) are greatly seen in the two short stories “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and in the novel The Awakening also by Kate Chopin all written in mid-19th century. These all illustrate how women were oppressed by patriarchal power and how women rose and subverted patriarchal oppression which elucidates Hall’s theories that state women have been denied self-expression affecting their daily lives and patriarchs take power away from women.
Pun Control, this may be the most challenging obstacle discussed yet. We all know a pun consists of word play that suggests two or more meanings, but over use of puns in dramatic or serious works is not punny. The brilliant author William Shakespeare, along with other comedy writers used this strategic method and by reading their novels the overflowing joy and laughter is outstanding.
Psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists study humor because it is a fundamental culture value, but they still can’t determine why certain things make some people laugh and others not. There are “humor quotient” tests that are designed to measure an individual’s sense of humor, but these tests are questionable. These tests aren’t accurate because almost all humor depends on cultural background knowledge and language skills. Not every person in the whole world, or even in one country share the same background knowledge and skills, therefore they cannot have the same type of humor. “The fact remains that individuals vary in their appreciation of humor” (Rappoport 9). Since humor varies from individual to individual, humor lies in the individual. How successful or funny a joke is depends on how the person receives the joke, humor cannot be measured by a statistical
is a great aspect of humour, this is shown in two major ways. One of
Possible effects and some examples are pain in stomach, heat stroke, asthma or other allergy symptoms. So this technology is really useful for keeping our homes clean and healthy. The dehumidifier has an incredible design which solves the main issue really well; most dehumidifiers have a fan compressor, reheater, compressing cooler coils, and a reservoir. And here are how these components are broken down into three individual steps to work together and solve the issue. Firstly, a fan from a dehumidifier collects and drags air (with large amounts of moisture) into the machine. Then, as the air is being brought through, it approaches a section of the dehumidifier called the cooled coils. These coils are designed to perform the process of condensation to drag moisture away from the air that is passing through. The moisture would remain on the coils and eventually drip into the dehumidifier reservoir. Finally, the air inside the machine would be reheated and exhausted back to the room.
Every teacher has a different method of teaching. The teachers that I have had in my school career have been no exception. In this way, each teacher has set an example for me, as a future teacher, to follow or not to follow as I see fit. With the examples from my teachers and in continuing my education, I am developing my own method of teaching. I plan to use a combination of teaching methods in my own classroom. My method will be an eclectic approach because I will be using components of more than one philosophy. I will be using essentialism, behaviorism, progressivism, and existentialism.
There are many scholars and theorist who believed the untranslatability concept. Pun is a clear case of ambiguity. It is certainly true as mentioned by Delabastita (1993) that the current interest in pun is fairly of recent date, and even the important role of pun in modern works is usually overlooked.
An idiom is a group of words that have a meaning that is not deduced from the groups of words literally. Thus, unlike the meaning of sentences, the meaning of idioms cannot be deduced by the morpho-syntactic rules of language. It was once hypothesised that the meaning of idioms are arbitrary just like how the meaning of words are arbitrary and in order to make sense of idioms, the meaning of idioms have to be first subconsciously incorporated into memory. However, in recent years, it has been debated that the meaning of some idioms can actually be derived from the meaning of words that from up the idiom. Currently, there are 3 broad classes of idioms namely the “normally decomposable” idioms, the
...rimenters would like to discover. If the experimenters are wanting to focus on gender norms, a more decisive way would be to tease this apart would be to have the confederates cross-dress, but be dressed up while cross-dressing. If the experimenters want to learn more about presentation of self and response of the world, but not taking into account gender norms or expectations, a study taking place in various settings, requiring different types of helping behavior would be best to see the external validity of this idea. Depending on the helping behavior that is required in the cross-dressing experiment, one would again expect more hesitation compared to those complying with gender norms. If the experiment focused on one’s presentation, one would expect that to an extent, the more effort and care it seems that one has put into themselves, others will respond in kind.
Writers at the time such as Aristophanes and Menander wrote comedy similarly to how we do today, mocking politicians, fellow writers, and Greek philosophers (Mark Cartwright). The word ‘comedy’ is derived from Middle English, from Medieval Latin comoedia, from Latin, ‘drama with a happy ending’ (Merriam-Webster). This joyful type of performance may be why we commonly use the word ‘comedy’ to talk about jokes, humor, and hilarious performers. Comedy is meant to bring us joy and relief from reality’s negativity. Mary O’Hara wrote about comedy for a BBC article titled “How Comedy Makes us Better People”: “Comedy is more than just a pleasant way to pass an evening, humour more than something to amuse. They’re interwoven into the fabric of our everyday existence. Whether you’re sharing an amusing story down the pub, making a self-deprecating joke after someone pays you a compliment or telling a dark joke at a funeral, humour is everywhere. (O’Hara)” This is certainly an accurate statement about modern comedy. Comedy is not sadness, but rather a way to forget the woes of everyday life. What is the point in humorous incidents and ridiculous jokes if they do not make a person smile or laugh so hard their gut