OMAR AL- MUKHTAR UNIVERSITY
‫جامعة عمر المختار‬
FUCLTY OF ARTS
‫كلية االداب‬
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
‫قسم اللغة االنجليزية‬
OH, THAT IS A PUN!
A STUDY ON THE PHONOLOGY OF ENGLISH SPEECH-PLAY
By.
Dr. Adam Mohamed Abdelkadir
1
OUTLINE
Thesis sentence;
The creation and use of puns is one of
the important and perpetually operative
factors bringing about changes in the
meaning and enjoyment of the language,
and not nonsensical talks or speech
errors, as many people think.
2
I- Defining Puns.
A pun is indeed an important device in speech-play for some common speech
events. Even if it looks sometimes inaccurate, but a convenient tag for a whole variety of
rhetorical devices which play on words.
Puns developed variously, notable because we like to play with words. We put
old words to new uses to coin new expressions, largely for the sake of novelty or
cleverness, even though the results vary.
Puns mean the expression of thought, feeling and emotion. It is an expression of
the heart of language, and whole way of feeling, seeing and expressing. Let us hear the
tone of puns circling smoothly with these words:
I love smooth words, like gold-enameled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish?1
Some people believe that puns are an accidental feature of particular situations. I
think they are wrong, puns surely are intrinsic to language because of the availability of
homophones, homonyms and the undeniable ambiguity, which one can find in any
language.
In fact, there are different uses of puns made by common people in daily speech,
to communicate with others everywhere. When we use a pun, we should work within
limits in order to avoid the ambiguity and misunderstanding of the real meaning, which
we want to manifest or create. Therefore, we cannot make puns, which have no clear
meaning in language. Actually, because of this misunderstanding many people could say
that punning is nonsensical talk and speech error. However, they are definitely wrong.
What will they say about poetry and humour, which show the high level of any?
Literary writing in society? Most of us would agree that punning has an important
role in creating poetry and humour.
Actually, many common people make puns accidentally or deliberately in their
daily speech, but are they slip of tongue rather than intentional linguistic witticism? On
the other hand, are they real puns? It is difficult to answer this question, but I find what
1
- Eleanor Wylie. "Pretty Words". Collected Poems
3
Sobkowiaky- W, an English language philologist, said about this subject a, good answer
to this question:
“One obvious reason of this confusion is that it is rather difficult to ascertain on each
particular occasion whether a speaker is playing with words or committing a. linguistic
error”.2
So, punning is free to all, available to everybody, it is a common property, and it
is one of the first uses to which any person could put his/her gift of speech by playing
with words to create any speech form they need. Any man to be rich intellectually needs
a great store of words. The more words he has the richer he is. Certainly, words are
important because they are tools with which one can speak and write, remembering that
the knowledge of a dictionary is fundamental, but often it is not enough. What I mean is
that, to choose the right meaning is usually not simple, because of the similarities in
sound, meaning and spelling of the words in language which make the choice rather
difficult and confuse the hearer at the beginning sometimes, such as these words for
example: The word bare and the word bear. They have the same sound (bear) but
different meaning. This could confuse the hearer unless the speaker explains what he is
talking about. Even sometimes, the same word has different meaning as we use it, if it is
a verb or a noun, such as these: Past, Pun, Water and so on.
By this, we can say that punning is double thinking in using and finding out the
hidden meaning. To understand puns one should have wit and ability to recognize
differences in apparently similar uses of the word in language. I mean the differences
between puns and polysemy- one word used in different senses, like doublet, and
between puns and homonymy or homophony.
In fact, puns are like any other kinds of linguistic adventitious terms, which play
on language words, which have similar spelling or pronunciation to bring out new useful
meaning.
Clearly, puns are an artistry form of using language words to produce new
meaning, and not colloquial speech below the level of standard speech. "Puns often make
2
- Sobkowiak, 1991. p.59
4
real and important contributions to both vocabulary and idiom".3 To understand puns
person should be aware of ambiguity. Walter Redfern, a linguist expert, confirms this and
says:
“The pun is not natural; it is an art form and demands special attention, like any artistic
product. Those who engage in this activity are well aware of the need to prepare the
ground, to alert the listener's mind which once it has been forewarned, is on the look out
for the witty shaft”.4
This definition shows us that not everybody can understand and use a pun! It is
not surprising to hear some people say that punning is a kind of slip, error or sheepish
speech. Of course, they are wrong.
I. A- Puns in language.
Speech-play is one of the good ways to practice language. It provides a realistic
framework, which shows us that it is difficult to find many words in English that possess
only one meaning, which confuses the students in learning new words of the second
language. However, we should not forget the role of the teacher in this matter. It is very
important to help the students to understand and to use speech-play anytime they need,
and encourage them to use their linguistic knowledge actively. This can be achieved in
schools, for example, by playing language word', games during English classes.
When we use puns, it means that we use the vocabulary and the structures of
language. Language is audible and produced by the tongue. "Language is the body of
words and the methods of combining words understood by a considerable amount of the
community".5 Therefore, language can exist only where several or many people live
together. Thus language, "Both in its origin and its essential character are often
spoken".6
People use language to communicate with others, and to express their thoughts
and feelings any time they want. In addition, in this way we could say that language has
taken a living form like an animal or plant, and now indeed, it is like a plant In that it is
constantly growing and changing in time.
3
- Myers, p. 78
- Redfern, p. 15
5
- Lancaster, p. 189
6
- Ibid. P.200
4
5
The climate of puns in school is. A very effective factor ... in teaching, because
puns create fun and a pleasant atmosphere* which are helpful in teaching. Moreover,
there is also a strong ample evidence of educational improvement, in learning words an4
vocabulary by using some games in a classroom. "Theoretical linguistics, with its aim of
throwing light on the nature of human language seems to have applications to questions
of learning, because language is learned, to social questions since language is a vital
element in society".7
A.1- Puns in daily speech.
To communicate with others, we use the words of language, and we use puns in
our daily speech when we make jokes or some humorous actions. In fact, the tone of
puns can be heard in everyday speech. People use puns almost everyday in their jobs, as
advertisers, religious leaders, politicians and writers of all kinds. Puns help them to say
several things at once.
Clearly, language is intimately tied to man's feeling and activity. It is bound up
with nationality, religion and feeling of self. It is used for work, worship and played by
everyone, be he a beggar, savage or civilized.
The use of puns is an important factor in the education system. Teachers use puns in their
classes to bring the techniques of teaching into line with a more cognitive model of
language teaching, which emphasizes the communicative value of language changes,
changes that reach into every aspect of the use of words and their meanings. As we
know, people from all lifestyles study languages. More languages are studied than ever
before, and the methods of learning are changing radically.
A. 2- Puns are fun.
Most of us would agree that puns are not funny all the time of course, but we use
puns in some situations to express our thoughts and feelings. Poetry and word games are
both dependent on puns. In fact, we have a very food gun with pun, Oh sorry; I mean
good fun with pun. Alfred Lord Tennyson, a poet and songs writer, expresses his feeling
through these words by using puns:
7
- Currie. P,61.
6
How sweet it was, hearing the downward stream with half-shut eyes ever to seem falling
asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the
height.8
Puns in this poem make the meaning of the words very imaginable and
beautifully expressed.
In addition to this, puns are also used in some funny verses, because humour
verse lines are usually regular in form with clear rhymes like honey/funny, life/knife.
However, some writers enjoy using false rhymes and play with words to give them new
meaning, for example:

I sat in an office and say to myself; you have a responsible job,
havenue?

"An accident happened to my brother Jim,
When someone threw some tomatoes at him
Tomatoes are juicy and don't hurt the skin
But these had been carefully packed in a tin".9
The use of puns needs a great ability of witticism. Like poetry, we love it, we
enjoy it, it gives us great pleasure, but not everybody is able to create it.
Clearly, the effectiveness of jokes and humour situations is dependent on the shifting of
meaning we use, because punning is the basic form of wit. Bringing to the mind this
piece of work, this shows us the use of puns;
In one of college classes, the professor was unable to stay for the class, so he
placed a sign on the door, which read as followed: Professor Blank will be unable to
meet his classes today. Some college lad, seeing his chance to display his sense of
humour after reading the notice, walked up and erased the "C" in the word classes. The
professor noticing the laughter wheeled around, walked back looked at the
8
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson. "The Lotus-Eaters". Choric Song.
- Wilson, p.77
9
7
students, then at the sign with the "C" erased- calmly walked up and erased the
"L" in Lasses, looked at the flabbergasted students and proceeded on his way.10
If we think a little more about any word in a language, we find that, there are
more than -one meaning for nearly each word in any language. It depends on where and
when the word is used, let us have a look at this passage; each word has a useful meaning
in language, but not in this case: NOTHING TO DO
Nothing to do?
Put some mustard in your shoe
Fill your pockets full of soot
Drive a nail into your foot
Put some sugar in your hair
Place your toys upon the stair Smear some Jelly on the latch
Eat some mud and strike a match Draw a picture on the wall
Roll some marbles down the hall Pour some ink in Daddy's cap
Now go upstairs and take a nap.
It should not escape our attention that, there is another use of puns in language,
which is mentioned by Sobkowiak: "The phonology of pun-spoonerisms is determined by
the availability of meaningful transpositions".11
The use of pun-spoonerisms in language is one of the trickiest uses, because the new
meaning must be used in an appropriate sentence and it must contain a sensible meaning.
The meaning of pun-spoonerisms is to transpose the alphabetical places of the words of
one sentence, which had been occupied, by another word. This transposition usually had
a bizarre effect of the initial sounds of words adjacent in a phrase. The new meanings
mostly have a sense of humour such as in these ones:
10
- Ibid. p.97..
11 -
Sobkowiak, 1990: p.70
8

“Let me sew you to a sheet, for: show you to a seat”.12

“You have hissed the mystery lectures, for: missed the
history”.13

“Start your journey with a well boiled icicle, for: will oiled bicycle”.14

“The country owes much to its horny, hundred tons of soil, for:
hundred sons of toil".15

“Our queer dean, for: dear queen”.16
Here are some spoonerisms to work out:

He stopped at the gate of "High mouse!” he said proudly.

I am sad to glee you.

I am going to fight the liar because it is crowing gold!
Punning is like coding, makes people think carefully about language itself. If it is
merely a set of chains of words, but words and different meanings. These meanings
depend on where we put them in sentences, and if the word is a noun or a verb. For
example, the word read has more than one meaning such in these sentences:
John is reading a novel.
The doctor is reading the X ray.
The pilot of the plane said, "Do you read me?”
Do not read any hidden meaning into this.
12
- Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English,
13
– Ibid. p.44
Concise Oxford Dictionary.
15
- Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary
16 Encyclopedic World Dictionary.
14 -
9
She reads his fortune on the palm of his hand.
Read between the lines.
Read my lips.
I.B- The aim of puns.
As a matter of fact, we use puns in everyday speech, as we use slang or make
jokes. Puns help us to play with language words in order to bring about new meanings or
expressions. The pun is the heart of language and helps us to tell jokes and to have some
enjoyment.
Puns help some writers to express their thoughts through the words of language,
especially poets or comedy writers.
In a sense, puns mean to "break the words into parts and build up new meaning to
express our feeling and emotions toward certain people in certain situations.
II- The motions of puns.
Punning is a key movement in creating a second use of any word or phrase, which
rotates around the first sense, which differ in meaning but sound alike. I mean that, with
puns we can switch the words of our language any time we want to express certain
thoughts in certain occasions.
One can see the motions of puns clearly in the development of modern jokes
among writers of comedy. Punning is language and mind, two meanings for the price of
one word. We should welcome the value for money.
Knowing words in isolation is less than knowing the vocabulary of the language, but
knowing puns is to know the dormant meaning. This joke is a good example:
A man said to his friend: Do you know, my dog has no nose! The friend asked, how does
he smell? Terrible!
11
Today a lot of people use puns occasionally in humour or for pleasure, and the
listener admires puns more for the effort and ingenuity which goes into their creation
rather than because he or she enjoys their obvious form of wit.
Puns depend on formal identity and semantic differences because the meaning of
words depends on situations in which they have been observed and understood.
Meanings change subtly and radically from sentence to sentence according to the context.
Of course, punning is well known in ordinary conversations and in comic writing.
III- Variation in speech.
Language spoken by large population’s shows marked differences among groups
of speakers. These variations of speech will continue to change with language, because
languages never hold still.
Every language is the product of change and continuous to change as long as it is
spoken. Therefore, variations in speech are normal to language.
Various definitions of speech have been written and mentioned in many books.
One cannot understand a language fully without understanding at least some of the
distinct cultural meaning expressed through it.
Speech is intimately tied to our feelings and activities. We use it in different
situation6 and places; it is bound up with real life and a feeling of self. It is used for work,
worship and played by everyone. When a person speaks, he produces vocal noises that
are associated with cultural traditions meaning.
Speech-play is a complex structure, made up of smaller units combining in turn
into larger sequences that follow specific patterns of 8tund associated with the units and
patterns of cultural weaning, which constitute a communication system of language. The
system is organized as a structure into which new sounds and experiences are fitted and
formed, whereby they get their significance.
The structure of a language has two parallel substructures! expression and
content, and the web between the two are the word.
11
The smallest unit of full expression is the sentence, not the word. We talk in
sentences. Words are parts of sentences, they do not constitute full expression except
when a single word is a sentence, e.g. Stop! Go! John! these are single word sentences.
Therefore, words exist only in people's minds, and all minds are different. No
word has a meaning, which it inevitably calls up on everybody else's mind. People can
communicate because they agree closely enough for practical purposes, to let certain
words symbolize certain ideas.
IV- English humour and puns.
Many people say that the British have no sense of humour. They enjoy wit, but do
not understand humour.
Poor man, we say, "he has no sense of humour". In addition, we may mean that he
has not laughed at one of our favorite jokes. We are ready to agree that other people have
wit, but we try to keep -pun- in a glass case marked HUMOUR.
IV.A- The difference between humour and wit.
To know if there are any differences between humour and wit, let us have a look
at what is written about both in dictionaries:
Wit: "The ability to say things which are both clever and amusing at the same time”.17
Humour: "The ability to be amused -a sense of humour,
The ability of causing amusement”.18
Now, let us have another look at what is written about puns:
"A witticism involving the playful use of a word in
a different sense”.19
17
- The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
- Ibid. P.76
19
- The New Lexicon Webster*s Dictionary.
18
12
Prom the point of view of what we have read, we can say that punning and
witticism are outgoing, and need words to play with to create humour. Not necessarily at
the same time; if someone steps on a banana skin and falls with wildly waving arms, he
is not being humorous, but we may "laugh our heads off" at his accident.
IV.B- The effects of puns on humour.
Outgoing humour does not need puns all the time, of course. Charlie Chaplin's
acting was sometimes very witty, but most of our laughs come as the result of the
situations he gets into in his films. However, in books or magazines, the use of puns is
very important and jokes are funnier because the words are witty.
Another important thing we should remember is that, sometimes wit offers
difficulties to the foreign students of a language, by the time he has understood the words
of a clever joke, the foreigner may be too tired to laugh. Clearly, the humour of a
situation made by an artist makes us laugh because we see the fun in it.
In our daily communication, we use many words to build up amusing situations without
an artist's help. In fact, there are many puns in jokes, as we will read some of them later.
The commonest jokes in any language must be the topical ones about the events of the
day. The trouble about topical jokes sometimes is to understand them, because of the use
of some slang, or common words, which could be difficult for foreigners.
Most of the jokes in this paper are an attempt to show the effect of puns on the
invention of jokes. It will be hard to say whether they are humour or wit.
V- Puns and jokes.
Many common jokes in language depend on double context, but we should make
the idea of context to be clear and understood. In brief, the context is an important aspect
of meaning. If all language is part of a wider human situation, we can say that what a
word or a phrase, etc., means will depend largely on what the context of utterance is.
So, most of the jokes in this paper show the great effect of the use of puns in some
situations to bring about some funny and humorous meaning to the listeners.
13

"Two friends talking, one said, you know that my Grandfather lived to be
nearly ninety, and never used glasses! Well, lots of people prefer to drink
from the bottle”.20
"You know, dear, said Mrs. Karim, to her husband, Mr. Ahmed always
kisses his wife before he goes to work in the morning. You never do that!
Good Heavens, no! Why? I hardly know Mrs. Ahmed”.21

'How are they biting today, old man? On the neck and legs mostly.

He had had hard luck fishing and on his way home, he entered the fish
shop and said to the dealer, just stand over there and throw me five of the
biggest of those trout!.
Throw them! What for? Asked the dealer in amazement. Therefore, I can
tell my wife I caught them, I may be a poor fisherman, but I am not a lair.

Caller: I wonder if I can see your mother, little boy, is she engaged.
Willie: Engaged! She is married.

-I had a fall last night, which rendered me unconscious for several hours.
You do not mean it! Where did you fall? I fell asleep.

"What is the different between vision and sight?
Do you see those girls sitting in the center, there?
Yes. Well, the pretty one I should call a vision of
loveliness, but the other one- she is a sight”.22
 Gee, Pop, there is a man at the circus who jumps on a
horse's back,
slips underneath, catches hold of it's tail and finishes up on the horse's
neck, Dad: That is easy, I did all that the first time I ever rode a horse.
 "During a Christmas exam, one of the questions was: What causes a
depression? One of the students wrote: God knows! I don't. Merry
20
- Wilson, p. 43
- Trans, from Arabic.
22
- Wilson, p. 55.
21
14
Christmas! The exam paper came back with the Prof's notion: God gets
100, you get zero. Happy New Year”.23

Waiter! Yes, Sir. What is this? It is bean soup, Sir. No matter what has
been. What is it now?

The visitor was examining the class. Can you little boy, tell me what a
fishnet is made of? The bay answers:
Many holes tied together with
strings.

During a natural history lesson at school, Mary was asked to give a
name of an animal peculiar to South Africa. A Polar bear! replied
Mary instantly. The teacher frowned reprovingly. Come, come Mary,
she said, Polar bear are not to be found in South Africa. I know, Mary
answered, that is why it would be peculiar.
The conclusions we can draw from all what I had written in, titles paper are these,
punning is an important and effective aspect used by people to play upon language words
-to "bring about any new meaning they want. Punning is a .result of good thinking
expressed in a pleasant new meaning, and it is a perpetually operative factors bringing
about changes in the meaning and enjoyment of the language. Puns are not nonsensical
talks or speech errors as any people think, but a witticism involving a playful use of
words.
I- Defining puns.
A- Puns in language.
1- Puns in daily speech.
2- Puns are fun.
B- The aim of puns.
II- The motions of puns.
23
- Ibid. P.111.
15
Ill- Variation in speech.
IV- English humour and puns.
A- The difference between humour and wit.
B- The effects of puns on humour.
V- Puns and jokes.
16
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.
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5. Langacker, Ronald. Language and its Structure. New York: 1979. Hareourt Brace
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7. Redfern Walter. Puns. Oxford: 1984. Basil Blackwell Publisher.
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17