A Study on Homophonic Puns from the Perspective of Semantic Field Theory

Abstract

Homophonic puns, a kind of frequently occurring trans-lingual rhetoric, have been discussed previously but unsatisfactorily in terms of their intrinsic operating mechanism, and of factors that influence their rhetorical effects. From the perspective of semantic field theory, this paper provides a new approach to describe the two terms mentioned above by taking into consideration the consistent core glosseme shared by homophonic word and mapping word, the quantity of the homophonic ingredients and mapping words, the abstract mapping paradigm between semantic fields constituted respectively by the homophonic ingredients and mapping ingredients, and the syntactic legality of homophonic words. All these factors are summed up coming into being the identification criteria for rhetorical effect of homophonic puns. According to the criteria, different types of homophonic puns are also discussed.