SECTION:
Transcultural Stereotypes in Works of Art and Literature
Elena Arsentyeva (Kazan State University, Russia, Warsaw University, Poland)
The Role of Extended Metaphor and Phraseological Puns in Creating Humorous EffectThe aim of my research is to offer for consideration two main patterns of instantial stylistic use of phraseological units (PU, otherwise called idioms) in discourse, in general, and in jokes, in particular. The profound study of phraseological units cannot be confined to their meanings in core use only. Ply on words and creative use of language has always been part of the English tradition, so it's obvious enough that play on phraseological units in the English language continues an old tradition of puns and other types of play on words, characteristic of W.Shakespeare, O. Wilde, L. Carrol and many other writers.
Two very important patterns of instantial stylistic use of phraseological units, namely, extended metaphor and phraseological puns, in jokes can be regarded as excellent means of creating humorous effect and exercising one's linguistic creativity.
A metaphor is a transfer of name or some quality of one object to another based on the association of similarity and thus is actually a hidden comparison. Extended phraseological metaphor is characterized by pervasiveness. The base structure of a phraseological unit in jokes, as a rule, doesn't undergo various changes, so we can observe a string of sub-image(s) clustering around the base metaphor of the PU:
Comic Dictionary: PHILOSOPHER - one who instead of crying over spilt milk consoles himself with the thought that it was over four-fifths water.
In phraseology pun or wordplay involves the relation between the PU with its transferred meaning and the corresponding free combination of words with their literal meanings. The following two examples illustrate a failure to recognize and see beyond the literary meaning of a string of words by little children and adults due to the absence of the right phraseological unit in their mental dictionary:
'Johnny, where do you think God is this morning?' asked the Sunday-school teacher. 'In our bathroom', was the reply. 'What on earth makes you say that?' asked the amazed teacher. 'Because just before I left I heard pa say, 'My Lord! How long are you going to be in there?'
He: Don't you hate people who talk behind your back?
On the whole the study of PU "behaviour" in discourse helps us to understand the relationships of phraseological units in the eternal dichotomy between la langua and la parole proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure.
She: Yes, especially at the movies.
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