20. Pun and zeugma.

Pun – play upon words. The semantic essence of this device is based on polysemy and homonymy.

• “There comes a period in every men’s life, but she is just a semicolon in his.”

Period – промежуток времени; точка.

• Officer: What steps [=measures] would you take if an enemy tank were coming after you?

Soldier: Long ones.

• Жизнь бьет ключом – и все по голове.

Pun is ether polysemy actualized in the utterance which has at least 2 meanings => the recipient chooses one (1) or 2 contiguous utterances similar in form, their constituents have essentially different meaning (2).

(1) One swallow does not make a summer.

Swallow – ласточка; глоток

Is life worth living?

It depends on the liver.

Liver – печень; человек, существо

The child is father of a man.

Father – прародитель; отец

(2) It is not my principle to pay the interest, and it’s not my interest to pay the principle. Говори что думаешь, и думай, что говоришь.

Pun is also called calembour (French)

Pretended misunderstanding (here it is mostly intentional treating idioms used in their primary sense):

• “Why you cannot deny that he has good turns in him.”

“So has the corkscrew.”

• Cannibal cook: Shall I stew both those cooks we captured from the streamer?

Cannibal king: No, one is enough. Too many cooks spoil the broth.

• “Sam gave Toby a hug and said, ‘Jesus, you really had us scared’. Toby grinned and said, ‘You don’t have to call me ‘Jesus’ when we’re alone’.”

Zeugma consists in combining unequal, semantically heterogeneous incompatible words and phrases.

What makes zeugmatic combinations look uncommon, often humorous – disparity of grammatical types: one may be a free combination, the other an idiom (1); one is an adverbial preposition phrase, the other a prepositional object or attribute (2); grammatical connection is everywhere the same, but each unit pertains to a semantic sphere inconsistent with the other (3).

(1) “… was alternately cudgeling his brains and his donkey.”

Ломал голову себе и ребра – своему ослу.

(2) пил чай с женой с лимоном и с удовольствием

(3)”She dropped a tear and her handkerchief.”

“At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humor, put on kimono, airs and the water to boil for coffee.”

21. Climax (gradation) and bathos (anti-climax).

Climax (Greek – ‘ladder’, Latin gradatio – ‘climbing up’) is such an arrangement of ideas in which what precedes is inferior to what follows. The first element is the weakest; the subsequent elements gradually rise in strength.

“I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. I’m so extremely sorry.”

An essential point. Climax is formed by correlative notions, which are supposed to belong to the same semantic plane – words, phrases, sentences may be what is called ‘ideographic synonyms’: their meanings demonstrate different degrees of the property expressed.

• “What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned?”

• The book has a power-a very exceptional power – the most powerful book of the month.

Bathos – ‘back gradation’.

A real bathos is a sudden deception of the recipient: it consists in adding one weaker element to one or several strong ones, mentioned before.

Produces a humorous effect.

• “It’s a bloody lie and not quite true.”

Except the cases of intended jest, anti-climax is climax erroneously programmed, disclosing a system of values contradicting our common sense

• No louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cats

When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last.

• “A woman who could face the very devil himself or a mouse -…”

• “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”