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CONTENTS

Introduction

Theoretical Part

Chapter I

A brief history of Stylistic Language

1.1 Ancient times

1.2 Late twentieth century

1.3 Recent Development: Stylistics in the United Kingdom

1.4 Literary stylistics in newspaper headlines

Practical Part

Chapter II

Stylistic Devices in depth

2.1 Imaginary Stylistic Devices

2.2 Sound Stylistic Devices

2.3 Structural Stylistic Devices

2.4 Miscellaneous Stylistic Devices

2.5 Irony Stylistic Devices

Chapter III

Alliteration in Poetry and Literature

3.1 Implicature

3.2 In Tense

3.3 Examples of Alliteration in Poems

Chapter IV

Metaphor and Stylistic Devices

4.1 The system of images and Stylistic Devices

4.2 Metaphor

Analysis

Bibliography

Materials consulted from internet during preparation

Introduction

This course work defines thoroughly the stylistic potential of the language of headlines in Newspapers. We all read stylistic headlines, or listen to them but mostly we do not pay attention on these stylistic language of headlines.

Definitions of Stylistics. Stylistics is the study of style. Just as style can be viewed in several ways, so there are several different stylistic approaches. This variety in stylistics is due to the main influences of Linguistics and Literary Criticism. Stylistics in the twentieth century replaces and expands on the earlier discipline known as rhetoric. Following the publication of a two-volume treatise on French stylistics by Ch. Bally (1909), a pupil of the structuralist, F. de Saussure, interest in stylistics gradually spread across Europe via the work of L. Spitzer and others. It was in the 1960s that it really began to flourish in Britain and the United States. Traditional literary critics were suspicious of an objective approach to literary texts. In many respects, stylistics is close to literary criticism and practical criticism. By far the most common kind of material studied is literary, and attention is textcentred. The goal of most stylistic studies is not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake, but to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text; or to relate literary effects to linguistic causes where these 19 are felt to be relevant. Intuitions and interpretative skills are just as important in stylistics and literary criticism; however, stylisticians want to avoid vague and impressionistic judgements about the way formal features are manipulated. As a result, stylistics draws on the models and terminology provided by whichever aspects of linguistics are felt to be relevant. In the late 1960s generative grammar was influential; in the 1970s and 1980s discourse analysis and pragmatics. Stylistics also draws eclectically on trends in literary theory, or parallel developments in this field.

So the 1970s saw a shift away from the reader and his or her responses to the text (e.g. affective stylistics, reception theory). Stylistics or general stylistics can be used as a cover term for the analysis of non-literary varieties of language, or registers (D. Crystal & D. Davy in Investigating English Style, 1969; M. M. Bakhtin in The Dialogic Imagination, 1981 and The Problem of the Text, 1986). Because of this broad scope stylistics comes close to work done in sociolinguistics. Indeed, there is now a subject sociostylistics which studies, for instance, the language of writers considered as social groups (e.g. the Elizabethan university wits); or fashions in language. [1]

The main sources for the presented textbook are Stylistics by I. R.Galperin (1977), Investigating English Style by D. Crystal and D. Davy (1969) and the most comprehensive book on Slovak stylistics Љtylistika by J. Mistrнk (1985). We adopted the framework of the chapters on a stylistic classification of vocabulary, lexical and phonetic expressive means and devices from Galperin's book, while reviewing and updating the content and presenting the most recent examples of the subject matter.Our explanation of paralanguage, graphetics and graphology is based on the ideas of D. Crystal and D. Davy. The book on Slovak stylistics by J. Mistrнk provided us with a broader context of stylistic study, mainly historical perspectives and recent developments. Some other sources were used to clarify specific concepts. As stated in the text, several summarising explanations were adopted from A Dictionary of Stylistics by K. Wales (1990) and examples were also sought for in the Slovak dictionary of literary terms written by T. Ћilka (1987). Basically, Stylistics is the study and interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective. As a discipline it links literary criticism and linguistics, but has no autonomous domain of its own. The preferred object of stylistic studies is literature, but not exclusively "high literature" but also other forms of written texts such as text from the domains of advertising, pop culture, politics or religion. I have tried my best to define the stylistic potential of language herein. Chapter by chapter you get not just base but deep information about the topics you read.

Theoretical Part

Chapter I

A brief history of Stylistic Language

1.1 Ancient Times

In ancient Greece the use of language can be seen mainly as an effort to create speeches. Thus we may recognize a practical function of language in political and judicial speeches, and an aesthetic function in ceremonial ones. The art of creating speech was called Rhetoric (from the Greek techno rhetorike) and was taught as one of the main subjects in schools. The aim was to train speakers to create effective and attractive speeches. Another language activity was the creation of poetic works. The process of artistic creation was called Poetics. Its aim was to study a piece of art, and, unlike rhetoric, it focused on the problems of expressing the ideas before the actual moment of utterance. The work of Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.) entitled Poetics is considered to be a pioneer publication in this field. His distinction of epics, drama and lyrics within artistic works is still applicable. The third field of language use was the art of creating a dialogue. The study of creating and guiding a dialogue, talk or discussion, as well as the study of methods of persuasion, was called Dialectics. The “dialogue technique” as one of the most convenient and efficient form of exchanging experiences and presenting research results was introduced and supported by Socrates. This method is still known in pedagogy as the “dialogical” or “Socrates' method”. The further development of Stylistics was based on the three above mentioned sources from which Poetics went its own way and created the field of study known at present as Literary Criticism. Rhetoric and Dialectics developed into Stylistics. The development of Stylistics in ancient Rome, that is about 300 years later, brought the distinction of two different styles in speech represented by Caesar and Cicero. Their main characteristics are summarized in the following table: [2]

1.2 Late twentieth century:

The French classical theory of styles requested the usage of a high (grand) style in all verbal works of art as an opposite to the everyday communication of common people in which the middle and low (plain) styles were used. The styles were classified as:

1. stylus altus (works of art),

2. stylus mediocris (the style of high society) and

3. stylus humilis (the style of low society but could be used in comedies).

This theory reflects preliminary attempts to describe the notion of style as based primarily on the selection of expressive means. At the beginning of the 19th century a German linguist and philosopher, Wilhelm von Humboldt described functional styles in his book “Ыber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss...” and treated poetry and prose (colloquial, educational and belles-letters prose) as opposites: poetry and prose differ in the selection of expressive means, i.e. words and expressions, use of grammatical forms, syntactic structures, emotional tones, etc. Humboldt's ideas appeared quite intriguing, however, and since his classification of styles was not based on and supported by any linguistic analyses of text samples, it remained idealistic. Later on, many linguists returned to and elaborated on his ideas, among others, the most influential were the members of the Prague Linguistic Circle (1926), V. Mathesius, B. Havrбnek and F. Trбvnниek.

Literary Stylistics:

In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Crystal observes that, in practice, most stylistic analysis has attempted to deal with the complex and `valued' language within literature, i.e. `literary stylistics'. He goes on to say that in such examination the scope is sometimes narrowed to concentrate on the more striking features of literary language, for instance, its `deviant' and abnormal features, rather than the broader structures that are found in whole texts or discourses.

For example, the compact language of poetry is more likely to reveal the secrets of its construction to the stylistician than is the language of plays and novels.

1.3 Recent Development: Stylistics in the United Kingdom

At the time when structuralism was at its most influential in Czechoslovakia, Denmark and the USA, the school known as The New Criticism originated in Cambridge, Great Britain. The main representatives were I. A. Richards and W. Empson, who introduced new terms, mainly the method of structural analysis called close reading. They devoted great effort to the study of metaphor and introduced the terms tenor and vehicle which are still in use. The New Criticism represents progress in stylistic thinking and their theory is valid even today. They also have followers in the USA. British stylistics is influenced by M. Halliday (1960's) and his structuralist approach to the linguistic analysis of literary texts. British tradition has always been the semiotics of text - context relationships and structural analysis of text: locating literature into a broader social context and to other texts. British Stylistics and Linguistic Criticism reached its most influential point at the end of the 70s (Kress, Hodge: Language as Ideology, 1979; Fowler, R. et al: Language and Control, 1979, Aers, et al.: Literature, Language and Society in England 1580-1680, 1981). All three books used transformational and systemic linguistics, an overtly structuralist and Marxist theoretical approach to the analysis of literary texts. Two years later Roger Fowler published a book signalling new directions in British Stylistics and marking its transition to Social Semiotics (Fowler, R.: Literature as Social Discourse: The 14 Practice of Linguistic Criticism, 1981). Fowler's book brings together British works (Halliday) with those of Barthes, Bakhtin and others of European traditions. Romance, English and American stylistics are based on observation and analysis of literary works (texts) and are very close to poetics. The original American tradition is based on practical methods of creating various texts, there is a school subject called creative writing and composition which is very often identified with stylistics. The field of study of stylistics in Slovakia is understood as more independent from poetics than the British tradition, but also very different from the American tradition (more theoretical, academic, e.g. F. Miko, J. Mistrнk, T. Ћilka, etc.). It is necessary to mention a contribution of Czech stylistics here, namely in the field of the classification of styles. The Czech linguist, B. Havrбnek, one of the representatives of the Prague Linguistic Circle, introduced the notion of functional styles based on the classification of language functions. According to B. Havrбnek the language functions are: 1. communicative, 2. practical professional, 3. theoretical professional and 4. aesthetic function. The first three functions are informative and the fourth one is aesthetic. This system of functions is reflected in the classification of styles in the following way: 1. colloquial (conversational) style, 2. professional (factual) style, 3. scientific style, 4. poetic (literary) style. In the 1970's larger structures of texts and networks of relations within which they circulate were studied, and recourses to Hallidayan linguistics, register and genre theory became influential. Typical representatives are Ronald Carter and Roger

Fowler. Among the latest tendencies there is the interesting approach of textual Stylistics which originated in Anglo-Saxon countries (Halliday: Cohesion in English, London 1976; Turner: Stylistics, Penguin Books, 1973) and from American centres of stylistic studies the Indiana University of Bloomington should be mentioned (Style in Language, 1958). In the 1990's two journals which map recent development have to be mentioned: Language and Literature (first published in Great Britain, 1992) and Social Semiotics (first published in Australia, 1991).

1.4 Literary stylistics in newspaper headlines:

There are more than 500 most popular newspapers around the world. All of them use stylistics as their basic language. The editor of New York Times once said “All newspapers do not carry news, they carry some stunning stylistic words to catch the attention of the reader, even not reader but sometimes to catch the attention of a passer by who just passes through a news stall and reads just 2 words, and it makes him a potential buyer of the newspaper.”

The literary stylistics history in the newspapers goes back to 16th century, when Chinese papers started to add readers, there were a lot of things which they had to do for getting success, one of which was the use of Stylistic Language in the headlines. From the Market Point of view stylistic language is majorly called as “the marketing arm”. For an example if we just pass by a newspaper corner in Pakistan after shopping in a mall, we just pass through our eyes on newspapers there and we can read the headings which are obviously shocking, like “Obhama cancels war in Afghanistan” this is just a shocking heading, indeed there is no reality in this heading, it just attracts us, to buy the newspapers. [3]

Practical Part

Usage of Stylistic Devices, Kinds of Stylistic Devices and Usage of Metaphors

Chapter II

Stylistic Devices in depth

2.1 Imaginary Stylistic Devices

2.1.1 Simile (Vergleich): a kind of comparison in which two things are compared because they have something in common though they are in all other respects different. The imaginative comparison is explicitly (ausdrьcklich) made with the help of like or as.

She walks like an angel. / I wandered lonely as a cloud. (Wordsworth)

This simile suggests/implies/illustrates that .[4]

2.1.2 Metaphor (Metapher): a comparison between two things which are basically quite different without using the words like or as. While a simile only says that one thing is like another, a metaphor says that one thing is another.

All the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players ... (Shakespeare)

Life's but a walking shadow ... (Shakespeare Macbeth)

`Night' is often used as a metaphor for `evil'. He uses `night' as a metaphorical equivalent of `evil'.

2.1.4 Personification (Verkцrperung): a kind of metaphor in which animals, plants, inanimate (leblos, unbelebt) objects or abstract ideas are represented as if they were human beings and possessed human qualities.

Justice is blind. Necessity is the mother of invention (Not macht erfinderisch). Eros is a personification of love. Eros personifies love.

2.1.4 Symbol (Symbol): something concrete that stands for something abstract or invisible.

The Cross is the symbol of Christianity. The dove (Taube) symbolizes peace/is symbolic of peace.

2.2 Sound Stylistic Devices

2.2.1 Alliteration (Alliteration): the repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning of neighbouring words.

Oh dear daddy of death dance ...

Words alliterate (with each other)/form an alliteration.

2.2.2 Assonance (Assonanz): the repetition of vowel sounds within stressed syllables of neighbouring words.

fertile - birth

2.2.3 Consonance (Konsonanz): the repetition of consonant sounds especially at the end of neighbouring words.

strength - earth - birth

2.2.4 Metre (Metrum): a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables within a line of a poem.

2.2.5 Iambic metre (Jambus): an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (- '-):

The way a crow (Krдhe) / Shook down on me / The dust of snow / From a hemlock tree (Frost)

2.2.6 Trochaic metre (Trochдus): a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one ('- -):

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright / In the forest of the night. (William Blake)

2.2.7 Anapestic metre (Anapдst): two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable (- - '-):

Oh he flies through the air / With the greatest of ease.

2.2.8 Dactylic metre (Daktylus): a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones ('- - -):

Just for a handful of silver he left us / Just for a riband (Band) to stick in his coat.

2.2.9 Onomatopoeia (Lautmalerei): the use of words which imitate the sound they refer to. adj. onomatopoeic the stuttering (stottern) rifles' rapid rattle / The cuckoo whizzed past the buzzing bees.

2.2.10 Rhyme (Reim): the use of words which end with the same sounds, usually at the end of lines.

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright / In the forests of the night.

2.2.11 Internal rhyme: rhyme within a line.

letters of joy from girl and boy

2.2.12 Impure rhyme: inaccurate (ungenau) repetition of sounds.

hill - full; man - mean; sky - fine; seem - weak

Eye-rhyme: rhyme that does not depend on sound but on spelling.

flow - how, beat - great, over - discover.

In older poems one has to consider that words were (maybe) pronounced differently from today.

2.3 Structural Stylistic Devices

2.3.1 Anaphora (Anapher): the repetition of a word or several words at the beginning of successive (aufeinander folgend) lines, sentences or paragraphs. Anaphora is a form of parallelism.

In every cry of every man / In every infant's cry of fear / In every voice, in every ban. (Blake London)

2.3.2 Chiasmus (Chiasmus, Kreuzstellung): a reversal in the order of words so that the second half of a sentence balances the first half in inverted (umgekehrt) word order.

Love's fire heats water, water cools not love. (Shakespeare)

2.3.4 Climax (Steigerung, Hцhepunkt, Klimax): a figure of speech in which a series of words or expressions rises step by step, beginning with the least important and ending with the most important. The term may also be used to refer only to the last item in the series.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed (schlucken), and some few to be chewed (kauen) and digested (verdauen).

The author brings a sentence to a climax. A paragraph leads to/reaches a climax.

Arguments are arranged in climactic order.

2.3.5 Anticlimax (Antiklimax): the sudden fall from an idea of importance or dignity (Wьrde) to something unimportant or ridiculous in comparison, especially at the end of a series.

The bomb completely destroyed the cathedral, several dozen houses and my dustbin.

2.3.6 Enumeration (Aufzдhlung): the listing of words or phrases. It can stress a certain aspect e.g. by giving a number of similar or synonymous adjectives to describe something.

Today many workers find their labor mechanical, boring, imprisoning, stultifying (lдhmend), repetitive, dreary and heartbreaking.

2.3.7 Inversion (Inversion): a change of the ususal word order (subject-verb-object). [5]

A lady with a dulcimer (Art Hackbrett) / In a vision once I saw.

2.3.8 Parallelism (Parallelismus): the deliberate (absichtlich) repetition of similar or identical words, phrases or constructions in neighbouring lines, sentences or paragraphs.

2.4 Miscellaneous Stylistic Devices

2.4.1 Allusion (Anspielung): an indirect reference to people or things outside the text in which it occurs, without mentioning them explicitly (explizit, ausdrьcklich).

The title of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls is an allusion to/alludes to a poem by John Donne.

2.4.2 Ambiguity (Ambiguitдt, Zwei-/Mehrdeutigkeit): the deliberate use of a word or phrase that has two or more relevant meanings. Ambiguity is the basis for a lot of wordplay.

The writer uses this word in a deliberately ambiguous way.

2.4.3 Euphemism (Euphemismus): hiding the real nature of something unpleasant by using a mild or indirect term for it.

“He has passed away.” instead of “He has died.” / “the underprivileged” instead of “the poor”

The author uses a euphemistic word instead of a harsh (hart, schroff) one.

2.4.4 Understatement (Untertreibung): the deliberate presentation of something as being much less important, valuable etc. than it really is.

“These figures are a bit disappointing” instead of “… are disastrous (katastrophal).”

“He was quite upset” instead of “He went into a terrible rage”.

2.4.5 Hyperbole (Hyperbel): obvious and deliberate (absichtlich) exaggeration. Its purpose is to emphasize something or to produce a humorous effect.

I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love / Make up my sum.

The text is full of/contains (enthalten) a lot of hyperboles/gross (grobe) exaggerations.

The author gives a hyperbolical/an exaggerated description of ...

2.4.6 Irony (Ironie): saying the opposite of what you actually mean. Do not use “ironic” in the vague sense of “funny/humorous”.

Teacher: “You are absolutely the best class I've ever had.” Actual meaning: “the worst class”

A text contains ironic statements/allusions.

The reader is expected to grasp (erfassen)/become aware of the irony of ...

2.4.7 Sarcasm (Sarkasmus): bitter and aggressive humour used to express mockery (Spott, Hohn) or disapproval (Ablehnung).

The text is full of sarcastic remarks.

2.4.8 Satire (Satire): a kind of text which criticizes certain conditions, events or people by making them appear ridiculous. Satirical texts often make use of exaggeration, irony and sarcasm.

Jonathan Swift was a satirist. He satirized (satirisch darstellen) the society of his time.

2.4.9 Paradox (Paradoxon): a statement that seems to be self-contradictory (widersprьchlich) or opposed to common sense. On closer examination it mostly reveals some truth.

The child is father of the man. (Wordsworth) / It is awfully hard work doing nothing. (Wilde)

A statement can be paradoxical. An author can express something paradoxically.

2.4.10 Oxymoron (Oxymoron): a combination of openly contradictory words and meanings.

“O hateful love! O loving hate!” / “I burn and freeze like ice.” (Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet)

2.4.11 Pun (Wortspiel): a play on words that have a similar sound but different meanings. The English language seems to lend itself to (sich eignen fьr) wordplay more than most languages because of its many homophones i.e.

words with the same sound as another. Homophones lose their ambiguity as soon as they are written.[6]

At the drunkard's funeral, four of his friends carried the bier. (bier Totenbahre vs. beer Bier)

A word with the same form as another but with a different meaning is called homonym (Homonym):

“Is life worth living?” - “It depends on the liver” (liver = sb. who lives vs. liver Leber)

An author can make a funny/subtle (subtil) pun on a word to attract the reader's attention.

He puns on a word for humorous purposes.

2.4.12 Rhetorical question (rhetorische Frage): a question to which the answer is obvious and therefore not expected. In reality rhetorical questions are a kind of statement.

Don't we all love peace and hate war? / Shouldn't we try to be friendlier towards each other?

2.5 Irony Stylistic Devices

2.5.1 Verbal Irony

This is the simplest form of irony, in which the speaker says the opposite of what he or she intends. There are several forms, including euphemism, understatement, sarcasm, and some forms of humor.

2.5.2 Situational irony

This is when the author creates a surprise that is the perfect opposite of what one would expect, often creating either humor or an eerie feeling. For example, in Steinbeck's novel The Pearl, one would think that Kino and Juana would have become happy and successful after discovering the "Pearl of the World," with all its value. However, their lives changed dramatically for the worse after discovering it.

Similarly, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, the title character almost kills King Claudius at one point, but resists because Claudius is praying and therefore may go to heaven. As Hamlet wants Claudius to go to hell, he waits. A few moments later, after Hamlet leaves the stage, Claudius reveals that he doesn't really mean his prayers ("words without thoughts never to heaven go"), so Hamlet should have killed him after all.

The way to remember the name is that it's for an ironic situation.

2.5.3 Dramatic irony

Dramatic Irony is when the reader knows something important about the story that one or more characters in the story do not know. For example, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the drama of Act V comes from the fact that the audience knows Juliet is alive, but Romeo thinks she's dead. If the audience had thought, like Romeo, that she was dead, the scene would not have had anywhere near the same power.

Likewise, in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," the energy at the end of the story comes from the fact that we know the narrator killed the old man, while the guests are oblivious. If we were as oblivious as the guests, there would be virtually no point to the story.

The way to remember the name is that dramatic irony adds to the drama of the story.

See Irony for a more detailed discussion, and definitions of other forms of Irony.

2.5.4 Depitation

Depitation is the over-use of extravagant words so as to appear more intelligent, or to ironically emphasize the opposite.[7]

Chapter III

The Paronomasia and Alliteration

The Paronomasia:

The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or metaphorical language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism uses an incorrect expression that alludes to another (usually correct) expression, but a pun uses a correct expression that alludes to another (sometimes correct but more often absurdly humorous) expression. Henri Bergson defined a pun as a sentence or utterance in which "two different sets of ideas are expressed, and we are confronted with only one series of words". Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, given that their usage and meaning are entirely local to a particular language and its culture.

Puns are used to create humor and sometimes require a large vocabulary to understand. Puns have long been used by comedy writers, such as William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and George Carlin.

History:

Puns were found in ancient Egypt, where they were heavily used in development of myths and interpretation of dreams.

In China, Shen Tao (ca. 300 BC) used "shih", meaning "power", and "shih", meaning "position" to say that a king has power because of his position as king.

In ancient Iraq, about 2500 BC, punning was used by scribes to represent words in cuneiform.

Typology:

Puns can be classified in various ways:

The homophonic pun, a common type, uses word pairs which sound alike (homophones) but are not synonymous. Walter Redfern exemplified this type with his statement "To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms". For example, in George Carlin's phrase "Atheism is a non-prophet institution", the word "prophet" is put in place of its homophone "profit", altering the common phrase "non-profit institution". Similarly, the joke "Question: Why do we still have troops in Germany? Answer: To keep the Russians in Czech" relies on the aural ambiguity of the homophones "check" and "Czech". Often, puns are not strictly homophonic, but play on words of similar, not identical, sound as in the example from the "Pinky and the Brain" cartoon film series: "I think so, Brain, but if we give peas a chance, won't the lima beans feel left out?" which plays with the similar - but not identical - sound of "peas" and "peace".Rhymes are often used, such as in the example cited below of a wine shop called "Planet of the Grapes." This plays on the rhyme between "grapes" and "apes."

A homographic pun exploits words which are spelled the same (homographs) but possess different meanings and sounds. Because of their nature, they rely on sight more than hearing, contrary to homophonic puns. They are also known as heteronymic puns. Examples in which the punned words typically exist in two different parts of speech often rely on unusual sentence construction, as in the anecdote: "When asked to explain his large number of children, the pig answered simply: 'The wild oats of my sow gave us many piglets.' " An example which combines homophonic and homographic punning is Douglas Adams's line "You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass." The phrase uses the homophonic qualities of "tune a" and "tuna", as well as the homographic pun on "bass", in which ambiguity is reached through the identical spellings of /?be?s/ (a string instrument), and /'bжs/ (a kind of fish).

Homonymic puns, another common type, arise from the exploitation of words which are both homographs and homophones. The statement "Being in politics is just like playing golf: you are trapped in one bad lie after another" puns on the two meanings of the word lie as "a deliberate untruth" and as "the position in which something rests". An adaptation of a joke repeated by Isaac Asimov gives us "Did you hear about the little moron who strained himself while running into the screen door?", playing on 'strained' as "to give much effort" and "to filter".[6] A homonymic pun may also be polysemic, in which the words must be homonymic and also possess related meanings, a condition which is often subjective. However, lexicographers define polysemes as listed under a single dictionary lemma (a unique numbered meaning) while homonyms are treated in separate lemmata.

A compound pun is a statement that contains two or more puns. For example, a complex statement by Richard Whately includes four puns: "Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred."[7] This pun uses "sand which is there/sandwiches there, "Ham/ham", "mustered/mustard", and "bred/bread". Compound puns may also combine two phrases that share a word. For example, "Where domathematicians go on weekends? To a Mцbius strip club!" puns on Mцbius strip and strip club.

A recursive pun is one in which the second aspect of a pun relies on the understanding of an element in the first. For example the statement "р is only half a pie." (р radians is 180degrees, or half a circle, and a pie is a complete circle). Another example is "Infinity is not in finity," which means infinity is not in finite range. Another example is "A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother."[8] Finally, we are given "Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant" by Oscar Wilde.

Richard J. Alexander notes two additional forms which puns may take: graphological puns, such as concrete poetry; and morphological puns, such as portmanteaus.[9

The Maya are known for having using puns in their hieroglyphic writing, and for using them in their modern languages. [21]

In Japan, "graphomania" was one type of pun.

Alliteration:

Alliteration is a literary device that repeats a speech sound in a sequence of words that are close to each other. Alliteration typically uses consonants at the beginning of a word to give stress to its syllable. Alliteration plays a very crucial role in poetry and literature:

· It provides a work with musical rhythms.

· Poems that use alliteration are read and recited with more interest and appeal.

· Poems with alliteration can be easier to memorize.

· Alliteration lends structure, flow, and beauty to any piece of writing.

Today, alliteration is often used to make slogans more memorable or to make children's stories more fun to read out loud.

To further understand the meaning it often helps to take a look at examples of alliteration in poems.

3.1 Implicature

In `Poetic Effects' from Literary Pragmatics, the linguist Adrian Pilkington analyses the idea of `implicature', as instigated in the previous work of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. Implicature may be divided into two categories: `strong' and `weak' implicature, yet between the two extremes there are a variety of other alternatives. The strongest implicature is what is emphatically implied by the speaker or writer, while weaker implicatures are the wider possibilities of meaning that the hearer or reader may conclude.

Pilkington's `poetic effects', as he terms the concept, are those that achieve most relevance through a wide array of weak implicatures and not those meanings that are simply `read in' by the hearer or reader. Yet the distinguishing instant at which weak implicatures and the hearer or reader's conjecture of meaning diverge remains highly subjective. As Pilkington says: `there is no clear cut-off point between assumptions which the speaker certainly endorses and assumptions derived purely on the hearer's responsibility.' (Pilkington. 1991, 53) In addition, the stylistic qualities of poetry can be seen as an accompaniment to Pilkington's poetic effects in understanding a poem's meaning.

3.2 In Tense

Widdowson points out that in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem `The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (1798), the mystery of the Mariner's abrupt appearance is sustained by an idiosyncratic use of tense. (Widdowson. 1992, 40) For instance, the Mariner `holds' the wedding-guest with his `skinny hand' in the present tense, but releases it in the past tense ('...his hands dropt he.'); only to hold him again, this time with his `glittering eye', in the present. (Widdowson. 1992, 41)

3.3 Examples of Alliteration in Poems

There are numerous examples of alliteration in poems. For example:

3.3.1 Poe:

Here are examples of alliteration taken from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe:

· Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary

· ...rare and radiant maiden

· And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

· Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before

In this Poe poem, weak and weary; rare and radiant; silken and sad; deep and darkness; and wondering and fearing are all examples of alliteration.

3.3.2 Other Literary Examples:

· Hot-hearted Beowulf was bent upon battle - from Beowulf. This example of Medieval Anglo-Saxon poetry contains alliteration using Beowulf, bent and battle.

· Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved His vastness - from Paradise Lost by John Milton. This example also contains alliteration with Behemoth and biggest born.

· Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields - from Sir Galahad by Alfred Tennyson. The example contains alliteration with fly, fens and fields.

· Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table - from The Death of the Hired Man by Robert Frost. Here, the alliteration is Mary and musing.

· For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky - from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Sky and sea are alliterative devices here.

3.3.3 Examples of Alliteration in Nursery Rhymes:

Mother Goose poems contain a great deal of alliteration. For example:

Betty Botter by Mother Goose

Betty Botter bought some butter, but, she said, the butter's bitter; if I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter, but a bit of better butter will make my batter better.

So she bought a bit of butter better than her bitter butter, and she put it in her batter and the batter was not bitter. So 'twas better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.

Three Grey Geese by Mother Goose

Three grey geese in a green field grazing, Grey were the geese and green was the grazing.

Baker's Reply to the Needle Salesman by Unknown

I need not your needles, They're needless to me, For kneading of needles, Were needless, you see; But did my neat trousers, But need to be kneed, I then should have need of your needles indeed.

3.3.4 Examples of Alliteration in Tongue Twisters: