on one hand, and the contexts at large (took a turn for the _____; too beautiful for ____) on the other (Heller 1980: 311). Many of the homophone-based punning ...
Li, David C.S. and Virginia Costa. (2009). Punning in Hong Kong Chinese media: Forms and functions. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 37(1): 77-107.
PUNNING IN HONG KONG CHINESE MEDIA: FORMS AND FUNCTIONS 1 David C.S. Li and Virginia Costa City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
ABSTRACT This paper shows that punning (shuāngguān) is commonly found in Hong Kong Chinese media, especially adverts. As a rhetorical device and a form of language play, punning – monolingual or bilingual – is generally used to enhance the communicative impact of what is said. Linguistically a punning effect may be achieved through homonymy or (near-) homophony. In the literature published in English, research on punning straddles stylistics and linguistics. With reference to Heller’s (1980, 1983) linguistic typology of punning, our analysis of selected examples from Hong Kong Chinese media shows that most instances of punning may be characterized as ‘retentional – non-disambiguational’ puns. Orthographic puns are very common, in that the punning effect is only apparent in the printed, but not in the spoken medium. Functional shift in the signaling device of the pun is another salient feature. SUBJECT KEYWORDS Punning, ambiguity, advertising, language play, homophony, homonymy 1. INTRODUCTION: THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE PLAY AND PUNNING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH In a temple, there were two statues – Buddha and Lăojūn (Laozi) – placed next to each other. A Buddhist monk came in and saw that Buddha was on the right of Lăojūn, which made him think that the former appeared less important than the latter, and so he moved Buddha to Lăojūn’s left before leaving the temple. Then came a Taoist priest who, seeing that Lăojūn was on the right of Buddha,
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likewise moved Lăojūn to Buddha’s left. As the statues were made of clay, they soon disintegrated and collapsed. After the Taoist priest departed, Lăojūn said to Buddha: “We were originally in peace, had it not been the two base and mean persons moving (bānnòng) us around”. (Yao 1999: 272f; our translation) All allegories contain a moral. The moral of this allegory seems to be that the harmonious co-existence of Buddhism and Taoism is fragile and easily damaged by conceited fundamentalists eager to assert the supremacy of their faith over that of their religious rivals. The key to this moral lies in the verb bānnòng (搬 弄), which in this context appears to mean literally ‘to move something about’ (搬, bān) and ‘to fiddle with something’ (弄, nòng), but which carries another meaning by virtue of its frequent collocation with shìfēi (是 非), that is, bānnòng shìfēi (搬 弄 是 非), viz. ‘sow discord’, ‘make mischief’, ‘tell tales’. Bānnòng is thus the key to the punch line of this allegory, as well as a pun (雙 關 語, shuāngguān yŭ). Punning is commonly found in various genres in Chinese, including classical Chinese (Chen Wangdao 1962/1976, Yang 1960), baihua novels such as Dream of the Red Chamber (Sun 1987), allegories (Yao 1999), and more recently, news headlines (Wu 1992) and adverts (Wang 1998, Xia and Luo 1994). It has been a long tradition in Chinese culture to play around with words or morpho-syllables with distinctive meanings related by homonymy (i.e., orthographically and phonologically identical) or homophony (i.e., orthographically distinct but phonologically similar or identical) (Kang 1993, Huang 1994, Yao 1999). This rhetorical device, which is generally referred to in English as punning, is commonly known in Chinese as shuāngguān (雙 關), literally ‘double link’ (cf. Chen 1962/1976: 96-103). Chen distinguishes between biăolĭ shuāngguān (‘overt-covert punning’) and bĭcĭ shuāngguān (‘mutually implicating punning’). The former is based either on (near-) homophony or homonymy, while the latter exploits the polysemous potential of morpho-syllables which are known to have identical pronunciation and written form and which are associated with more than one discrete meaning. According to Chen (1962/1976: 102-3), by its very nature bĭcĭ shuāngguān works only when the same signaling device is semantically compatible with two otherwise unrelated interpretations in separate contexts, making it ideal for the language function of innuendo (指 桑 罵 槐, zhĭ sāng mà huái). As a semiotic system, language is inherently ambiguous (Empson 1930/1984). In his study of ambiguity, Chao (1976: 293) regards pun-driven wit as ‘intentional ambiguity’. He shows that ambiguity may be found at both the lexical and syntactic
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levels. At the lexical level, the sequence of characters 頭 髮 長 得 怪 may mean either ‘the hair is strangely long’ (tóufă cháng de guài, where 長 means ‘long’, ‘become long’), or ‘the hair grows queer’ (tóufă zhăng de guài, where 長 means ‘to grow’). At the syntactic level, Chao illustrates how structural ambiguity may arise as a result of alternative segmentations producing immediate constituents which are semantically distinct. Thus, like Chomsky’s famous example, the shooting of the hunters, which oscillates between the second NP (‘the hunters’) being agent or patient, a Chinese syntactic unit such as 無 肺 病 牛 (wú fèi bìng niú) makes one think of ‘lungless sick cows’ (2+2: ‘no-lung sick-cows’), rather than the intended meaning ‘TB-free cows’ ((1+2)+1: ‘no-lung-disease cows’), due to a “great preponderance of the 2+2 rhythm over other forms of IC in a four-syllable sequence” (Chao 1976: 300). Punning derives its rhetorical effect from linguistic ambiguity, but ambiguity does not always result in punning. Tan (1993: 30-39) finds it unfortunate that various kinds of qíyì (歧 義, ambiguity) in language play or misinterpretation caused by similar-sounding expressions are confounded with shuāngguān (punning). He reviews a number of similar rhetorical devices and concludes that shuāngguān ought to be distinguished from other types of qíyì: “qíyì bùshì shuāngguān; wùjiě gèng búshì shuāngguān” (‘ambiguity is not punning; misinterpretation in particular should not be confused with punning’, p. 32). For Tan (1993), both meanings expressed by the signaling device in a genuine case of shuāngguān should be clear and limpid, and make sense in all the contexts that the pun brings to mind. Elsewhere, research shows that sometimes a pun may be discernible despite the absence of an overt signaling device, for the lexical units containing the pun may be ‘hidden’ (i.e. in absentia) and have to be figured out by the listener/reader much like a riddle. Two such structural patterns are known as ‘tail-less pun’2 (xiēhòuyǔ, 歇 後 語, Baker 1991) and ‘punning in hidden homophonic words’3 (xiéyīn cángcí, 諧 音 藏 詞, Yuan 1994). Similar to the study of shuāngguān in Chinese, punning in English forms an integral part of studies in stylistics or critical analysis of literary works of established writers, notably poets, playwrights and novelists from Geoffrey Chaucer to James Joyce. To our knowledge, Redfern (1984) is a rare single-authored monograph devoted to the stylistic study of puns in various domains, including advertising (Chapter 7). One possible reason for the dearth of research in punning may have to do with social disapproval. As it has been pointed out (see, e.g., Ahl 1988: 21; Culler 1988: 4; Heller 1980: 306, 311), the pun as a rhetorical device has been brought into disrepute because it often deliberately calls to mind meanings that range from a lack of good taste to the
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obscene, evoking thereby an “oh-no-how-could-you” type of listener reaction (Heller 1980). Ahl (1988: 25) goes so far as to say that “[s]ince our [academic] culture ‘objects to’ puns, we are desensitized to their presence”. In Empson’s (1930/1984) classic study of seven types of linguistic ambiguity, punning is categorized as type 3, which “occurs when two ideas, which are connected only by being both relevant in the context, can be given in one word simultaneously” (p. 102). Empson makes it clear that the term ambiguity is used in a psychological rather than logical sense (p. 121), making its discovery or recognition by the hearer/reader an essential condition of linguistic ambiguity. In his introductory chapter to the collection of essays on punning, Culler (1988) gives an informative overview of the position of punning and other types of wordplay (e.g. anagrams, portmanteau words, multilingual puns) and illustrate them with examples from western literary classics, mainly in English (cf. Redfern 1984). A punning effect may be achieved by various means, of which the one based on formal resemblance due to etymological derivation is generally seen as the weakest (cf. Empson 1984: 102-5). Culler (1988: 5) traces the two main punning strategies – homophony and homonymy – to two figures of speech in classical rhetoric: ‘paronomasia’ (near-homophonic pun) and ‘antanaclasis’ (homonymic pun). Punning has also been studied from a modern, linguistic point of view. Heller (1983: 477) discusses punning as one of the “five fundamental possibilities in the general function-to-manifesting mark relationship”, and outlines an elaborate system of 11 categories of puns (cf. Heller 1980). With the help of instructive examples, Heller (1980: 305) shows that when the punning effect is achieved, some puns are ‘retentional’ and ‘non-disambiguational’ (1), while others are ‘non-retentional’ and ‘disambiguational’ (2): (1)
The doctor fell into the well And broke his collar bone. He should have tended to the sick And left the well alone.
(2)
Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. (Ulysses, James Joyce) Thus in (1), in the second occurrence of the word well, both of the meanings
(‘place for collecting water’, ‘people who are healthy’) are retained. In contrast, although forth in (2), pronounced /f r /, is potentially ambiguous (signaling ‘direction’
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or ‘sequence’) in speech, the interpretation of ‘direction’ as suggested by ‘come forth’ gives way to that of ‘sequence’ once the collocation ‘came fifth’ is apprehended. On the basis of these two examples, Heller argues that, in a general typology of punning, the ‘well’ type belongs to the ‘retentional, non-disambiguational’ category, while the ‘forth’ type should be categorized as a ‘non-retentional, disambiguational’ pun. What all puns have in common, however, is the same basic structural characteristic that “a single manifesting mark signals more than one conceptual function” (Heller 1980: 306). Heller further demonstrates convincingly that this basic characteristic of punning is not limited to phonological identity of the signaling device, but may be shown to be relevant for analyzing punning involving other signaling devices such as hand gestures, hence the terms ‘gestural pun’ or ‘kinesic pun’ (Heller 1980: 309; 1983: 440). In addition, some puns are medium-specific, as when the written form of the signaling device is phonologically realized as different forms. Thus a pun based on the double meaning of the word bow (/b /, ‘weapon to shoot arrows’; /bau/, ‘bending from the waist’) only works in the printed medium, not in speech, hence ‘orthographic pun’ (Heller 1980: 310). In our data collected from Hong Kong Chinese media, punning has been found in a great variety of text types and sections of newspapers and magazines, especially in columns and cartoons intended for political satire, but also in more ‘serious’ sections such as news headlines and stories, for example, using punning to reinforce the language of social discontent displayed on banners in public protests. Above all, punning is commonly found in adverts to enhance their communicative impact by attracting readers’ or viewers’ attention in the hope that, despite their short attention span, whatever is promoted in the advert will leave them a deep-enough impression and influence their consumer behavior (Wang 1998). The main goal of this article is threefold: (a) to show that punning occurs in a variety of text types and discourse settings, especially newspaper sections in Hong Kong Chinese media, serving a wide range of communicative purposes; (b) to illustrate two commonly employed punning strategies: homonymy and (near-) homophony; and (c) to assess the relevance of Heller’s (1980, 1983) general typology of punning to our Chinese punning data. 2. DATA, METHOD, TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION The data reported in this article are essentially constituted by newspaper clippings of the Hong Kong Chinese press covering a period of about eight years since
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December 1993, including print adverts which were consciously collected for a project on punning in English and Chinese in 1999. The clippings came from miscellaneous local newspapers and magazines as they came to our attention. Data from the printed medium are supplemented by a few examples from television broadcasts. This article presents a qualitative analysis of punning in Chinese, with a view to exemplifying the two main punning strategies: homonymy and homophony. To assess how active the role of punning is in adverts, we will report results of a small-scale quantitative study of adverts appearing in illuminated light boxes at one MTR (Mass Transit Railway) station (Kowloon Tong) for one day. To reflect the actual flavor of puns in our data, the examples will be presented in the original wording as they actually appeared. This will be supplemented by a transliteration in Cantonese if the pun is phrased and intended to be read in Cantonese (transliteration system: Jyutping, Fan et al. 1997). Additional transliteration in pinyin will only be provided if a similar punning effect in Mandarin is discernible and thought to be intended by the punster. Both interlinear and idiomatic translation will be provided to render the meanings of Chinese examples into English. Two Cantonese dictionaries: Rao et al. (1981) and Zhan (2002) proved to be very useful in the process of writing up this study. 3. TYPES OF PUNNING IN HONG KONG CHINESE MEDIA 3.1 Homonymy: Punning through reanalysis of multisyllabic lexical units One of the commonly used strategies of punning consists of re-analyzing homonymic multisyllabic lexical units, including four-syllable sequences. One ingenious example is the name of a neighborhood chain store called PrizeMart, which is known in Chinese as 價 真 棧 (gaa3 zan1 zaan2, ‘Price Real Shop’ / ‘prices are really favorable’). Despite the somewhat archaic-sounding use of 棧 (zaan2, ‘shop’), the sequence has the syntactic structure of a noun phrase with a pre-modifying compound adjective (N-Adj N; viz. ‘price-real shop’). But the same sequence is interpretable to Cantonese speakers as a clause with a subject-predicate structure (N Adv-Adj; viz. ‘prices – really favorable’). Syntactic reanalysis is often achieved by exploiting the literal meaning of the target morpho-syllable(s) of a multisyllabic lexical unit. Thus in one advert, Canon ink-jet color printer claims that it is small (細, sai3) but performs well with outstanding clarity. Here the primary meaning ‘outstanding’ is conveyed by the lexical unit 出 色
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(ceot1 sik1); each of these two morpho-syllables, however, has their respective associations ‘stand out’ and ‘color’. Both the primary and literal meanings are ingeniously blended in a bilingual slogan right above the picture of a miniature cartoon-like ant wearing boxing gloves fighting a cat (only the head of a cat is represented): (3)
Mission impossible # 1 SIZE 勁 細 照 樣 能 打 得 出 色 SIZE ging6 sai3 ziu3 joeng6 nang4 daa2 dak1 ceot1 sik1 size real small still can print/fight MODAL-POTENTIAL outstanding/out-color ‘(Its) size is real small but (it) can print/fight outstandingly.’ [In the original advert, the characters are of different sizes and colors and do not appear on the same line, e.g. the character 細 ‘small’ appears in a smaller font.]
The last four characters (打 得 出 色) contain two puns. First, the morpho-syllable 打 (daa2), which usually means ‘to fight’ or ‘to hit’, also means ‘to print’ something (打 印 daa2 jan3) using a computer. This double entendre is derived visually from the context of computer printing as well as the graphic image of an ant fighting a cat. Second, the adjective 出 色 (‘outstanding’) is re-analyzed based on the literal rendering of the two morpho-syllables, thereby reinforcing the message that the colors of print-outs stand out very sharply. The company 3Com promotes three new models of Palm handheld organizers or computing platforms. They are all said to excel for two reasons: light and slim. These two qualities or meanings may be rendered into Cantonese as 輕 (hing1 / heng1) and 薄 (bok6), respectively. But these two morpho-syllables 輕 薄 (hing1 bok6) also collocate to form a lexical unit in standard written Chinese meaning ‘insult’ and ‘harass(ment)’, especially of females by males. This ‘coincidence’ may have motivated the advertiser to exploit the apparently unrelated associations and to make this lexical unit serve the function of an attention-grabber appearing vertically on the top right hand corner of the advert: 最 輕 最 薄 (zoei3 hing1/heng1 zeoi3 bok6, ‘the lightest and thinnest’). The four morpho-syllables are so presented and arranged that the character 最 (‘most’) is only half as big, framed within a circle and appears obliquely to the left of the two characters 輕 and 薄. Thus the actual visual effect is such, that the two morpho-syllables 輕 and 薄 stand out very sharply but, upon closer scrutiny, are each modified by the marker of superlative comparison 最, hence the composite target readings ‘the lightest’ and ‘the
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slimmest’. These two meanings are further reinforced by graphics: a feather on the top left reinforcing the meaning ‘light’, and a hand holding a Palm V model in the middle right showing how slim it is, plus pictures of the three Palm models at the bottom left. In the body copy of the advert is the key message: (4)
全 球 最 輕、最 薄 嘅 電 子 手 帳 cyun4 kau4 zeoi3 heng1 zeoi3 bok6 ge3 din6 zi2 sau2 zoeng3 entire world most light most slim NOMINALISER electronic handheld organizer ‘The lightest and slimmest electronic handheld organizer(s) in the world’
What is remarkable in this example of punning is that, when crafting the attention-grabbing function of the advert, the copywriter did not seem to be concerned at all by the reader’s possible objection to the unmistakable sexual overtone of the highlighted disyllabic adjective. Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) advertises EuroBonus (sic.) which allows passengers flying SAS and staying in SAS-affiliated hotels to gain free mileage. This attractive opportunity is promoted by reanalyzing a four-syllable sequence by exploiting its literal meanings: 有 機 可 乘 (jau5 gei1 ho2 sing4, ‘have opportunity to seize’ / ‘plane available to ride on’). The morpho-syllable 機 (gei1) is interpretable as ‘opportunity’ or ‘plane’ depending on context, while 乘 機 (sing4 gei1) may mean ‘to ride on a plane’ or ‘to seize an opportunity’, hence the composite meaning in context: ‘to seize the opportunity by flying with SAS and gaining free SAS flights’. In some cases, homonymy as a punning strategy is based on loose and nonstandard written forms in the dialect. A dialect-based pseudo-homonymy may be found in an advert for DAIKIN, a Japanese manufacturer of air-conditioners. There, the reader is urged to replace their old air-conditioner with a new DAIKIN model. To persuade the reader to consider this move, the advert includes a free coupon which is worth 300 Hong Kong dollars. Two of the key meanings in this advert are expressed in Cantonese by the character 舊 (gau6) which, depending on context, may mean either ‘old’ or ‘hundred bucks’. This apparent homonymy is exploited to give the following attention-grabber: (5)
1 舊 變 3「舊」? jat1 gau6 bin3 saam1 ‘gau6’ one old turns into three ‘hundred bucks’
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‘Turn one old (air-conditioner) into 300 bucks?’ From the point of view of form-function relationship, the punning effect in (5) is only second rate, for the syntactic legitimacy of the repeated punned lexical unit (gau6) is uncertain. The meaning of the first occurrence of 舊 (‘old’) is symbolized and reinforced graphically by its faded and lackluster graphical appearance. In the absence of a classifier and a noun phrase, however, the syntactic unit made up of the numeral and adjective (jat1 gau6) sounds archaic and somewhat strained in Cantonese grammar. Comparable idiomatic expressions tend to be non-productive, Mandarin-based frozen lexical units such as 破 四 舊 (pò sì jiù, po3 sei3 gau6, ‘demolish the four old traditions’), which was adapted from the four-syllable sequence 破 舊 立 新 (pò jiù lì xīn, po3 gau6 laap6 san1, ‘destroy the old and establish the new’). As for the second occurrence of gau6, notice that it is similarly flagged (「舊」). This is so probably out of the copywriter’s concern for the reader’s literacy: gau6 meaning ‘hundred bucks’ is a slang term which is probably derived from the homophonous classifier meaning ‘a lump of’ (written form recommended by lexicographers Rao et al. 1981 and Zhan 2002: 嚿). The semantic affinity between ‘hundred bucks’ and ‘a lump of’ seems fairly obvious: a hundred bucks is made up of a lump of bank notes. In sum, the apparent homonymy in this example (gau6: ‘old’ and ‘hundred bucks’) is imperfect at best, grounded in Cantonese written forms whose currency is suspect. Notwithstanding the gap between lexico-syntactic / orthographic representation and the intended double entendre, we believe the attention-grabber in this advert, reinforced by other visual cues, does succeed in conveying the key message: “turn your old air-conditioner into ‘300 bucks’ by taking this special offer and buying a brand new DAIKIN air-conditioner!”. Cantonese-specific written forms like the slang term gau6 (‘a lump of’, ‘hundred bucks’) are discouraged in formal schooling as they are generally banned in formal writing. When they do appear in informal sections of newspapers and magazines, the writer often resorts to phonetic borrowing as shown in (5), resulting in potential ambiguity. Example (5) is no isolated instance, for research has shown that phonetic borrowings in various sections of the Hong Kong Chinese press are often flagged by square brackets (Li 2000; see below). 3.2 Homophony: Punning by substituting a homophone for a target morpho-syllable As shown in examples (3) to (5), a punning effect may be achieved through reanalysis of (apparent) homonyms, in that the morpho-syllables of a lexical unit are given a literal re-interpretation in addition to its usual meaning. In the examples
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presented in this section, punning is achieved by substituting a (near) homophone for a target morpho-syllable. In Chinese this is generally known as 諧 音 (xiéyīn, haai4 jam1, homophony), which seems to be a more commonly exploited form of language play compared with homonymy (Yuan 1994). The examples below were collected from a variety of sources, including titles of drama series on TV and newspaper columns, pseudonyms of columnists, social and political news stories. A colorful quarter-page feature about the fierce competition among various Asian manufacturers of cup noodles contains many illustrations and pictures of different brand names. The word for ‘noodle’ in Chinese is 麵 (miàn, min6). The headline of this feature appears in huge characters and contains a pun as follows: (6)
國際正麵大交鋒 gwok3 zai3 zing3 min6 daai6 gaau1fung1 international great noodle / face-to-face big battle ‘face-to-face big battle between international manufacturers of great noodles’
The second morpho-syllable in the disyllabic word 正 面 (zing3 min6) ‘face-to-face confrontation’ is replaced by the homophone 麵 meaning noodle, thereby imparting a new meaning to 正 as well, which now means ‘great’, ‘fine’, ‘super’, and the like (variant pronunciation: zeng3). The result is an interesting punned headline: ‘face-to-face big battle between international manufacturers of great noodles’. Punning is sometimes found in column titles of the Hong Kong Chinese press. Thus the title of one long-standing advertising column in Apple Daily concerned property news and was called 選 宅 情 報 (syun2 zaak6 cing4 bou3, ‘choose house information’). The first two characters allude to the homophonous disyllabic word 選 擇, meaning ‘to choose’. By substituting the second morpho-syllable 宅 (zaak6) meaning ‘house’ or ‘apartment’ for 擇, one gets a cleverly worded column title, which may be glossed as ‘key information for choosing the best property’. The same pun occurs in another advert appearing in newspapers as well as on many trams, double-decker buses and public light buses as follows: (7)
換樓如換鈕,輕鬆選宅 wun6 lau2 jyu4 wun6 nau2
hing1 sung1 syun2 zaak6
change apartment like replace button
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easy-and-relaxed choose house
‘changing apartments is like replacing buttons, choose (your new) house in an easy-and-relaxed manner’ In the first part of this advert put up by a property agency, changing apartments (換 樓, wun6 lau2) is compared to replacing buttons (換 鈕 wun6 nau2), suggesting how easy and relaxed it can be to choose and settle in a new apartment with the help of that agency. It should be noted that the normative use of /l/ vs. /n/ in the two morpho-syllables affected, as is prescribed by lexicographers of Cantonese (‘leo’ vs. ‘neo’ in Rao et al. 1981; ‘lau’ vs. ‘nau’ in Zhan 2002), is rarely observed in the vernacular of the majority of Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers. On the contrary, /l/ and /n/ are generally pronounced in free variation in the local speech community, sometimes within the same speaker. In any case, the near-homophony between the two morpho-syllables gives this slogan a “natural” appeal and makes it easy to remember. Another interesting example may be found in the title of a chatty column in Apple Daily: (8)
給你一個敏 kap1 nei5 jat1 go3 man5 give you a CLASSIFIER [personal name of columnist] / kiss ‘give you a [personal name of columnist] / kiss’
The last character in this column title has exactly the same pronunciation as the columnist’s given name or pseudonym 李 敏 (lei5 man5), but is otherwise homophonous with the morpho-syllable 吻 ‘kiss’, hence the punned meanings ‘give you a piece of me (敏)’ and ‘give you a kiss’. A similar example is the pseudonym of another columnist called 畢 求 仁 (bat1 kau4 jan4; compare homophone: 不 求 人, ‘not rely-on person’ / ‘not to rely on anyone’). Examples such as these suggest that wordplay involving pseudonyms is fairly common in informal sections of Hong Kong Chinese print media. Punning also figures in titles of radio and TV programs. In July, 1999, for example, one drama series on TVB Jade carried a punned title 吾 係 差 人 (m4 hai6 caai1 jan4). In its written form, this title means literally ‘I am a cop’. It is a story about four auxiliary police officers, whose official duties often conflicted with their professional duties (two employees of a trading company, a taxi driver and a journalist). One main story line concerned one of the employees who was the son of the head of a triad group. Father and son did not see eye to eye because the son hated his father for
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making dirty money and breaking the law. It was for this reason that the son chose to leave the family and earned a living by working as an employee and serving as an auxiliary police officer. The pun occurs in the first morpho-syllable of the title 吾 (m4). It is a pronoun in classical Chinese meaning ‘I’, ‘me’ or ‘my’, and is homophonous with the high-frequency function word 唔, meaning ‘not’. Hence 吾 係 差 人 carries a very interesting pun: the written form says ‘I am a cop’, while the pronunciation tends to give the interpretation ‘(I’m) not a cop’. The punning in the title is ingenious in that the two meanings capture the exact nature of the main protagonist’s mental conflict very well. The title of this drama series is also interesting from the linguistic point of view, in that a functional shift is involved (cf. Heller 1980: 314) once the punning effect is apprehended by the reader (but not as readily by the listener). Its meaning in the written medium ‘I am a cop’, reflects a subject-predicate structure complete with the verb-to-be 係 (hai6), while the other interpretation, which is arguably more salient by virtue of the high-frequency negator 唔 (m4) in Cantonese compared with its homophonous counterpart 吾 from classical Chinese, imposes the structure of a verb phrase meaning ‘not a cop’. There is thus an interesting contrast between the two mediums: to those who are unfamiliar with this drama series, the punning effect is only apparent in the written medium, for when spoken, the morpho-syllable (m4) is unlikely to invoke the meaning in classical Chinese ‘I’. In other words, this punned title is medium-specific (cf. Heller 1980, 1983), at least for the first time it is introduced in speech, in that the double entendre tends to be obscure to Cantonese speakers. Homophonic punning also figures in social news occasionally. This may be illustrated by two examples. The first one concerns the language of protest. Just before Chinese New Year, 1999, the Democrats petitioned the HKSAR government pleading for reconsideration of the policy of importing workers from abroad. On one of the banners was written the expression 收 爐 (sau1 lou4), literally ‘pack stove’, which refers to the common practice among Hong Kong Chinese restaurants of taking a break, usually for two to three days, to celebrate lunar new year. This apparently irrelevant message alludes to a homophonous expression 收 勞, which may be analyzed and heard as a catchy, condensed way of expressing the same meaning in (9): (9)
收回輸入外勞政策! sau1 wui4 syu1jap6 ngoi6 lou4 zing3 zaak3 withdraw import foreign labor policy
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‘withdraw the policy of importing workers from abroad!’ Given the context, readers who are literate in written Cantonese should have no difficulty making out the connection and the intended message in this parsimoniously worded slogan. Here again, the punning is only apparent in the printed medium, largely because the intended abbreviated meaning alluded to (收 勞) is not a well-formed collocation in Chinese. The second example of punning in social news is more tragic. An unemployed, middle-aged man, after being coaxed and bullied into admitting that he had been selling illegal copies of copy-righted CDs by a con man, later committed suicide because the money that had been promised him by the real culprit was never given. Out of shame and bitterness upon realizing that he had been cheated, he threw himself out of the window of his own flat. On a table was a note that he had written apparently before committing suicide: (10) 售 賣 翻 版, 自 取 其 獄 sau6 maai6 faan1 baan2 zi6 ceoi2 kei4 juk6 sell
copies
self get own shame/imprisonment
‘selling unauthorized copies (of copy-righted material), I brought shame and imprisonment onto myself’ The last four characters are homophonous with an idiomatic four-syllable sequence: 自 取 其 辱, ‘bring shame on oneself’. By substituting the homophonous morpho-syllable 獄 (juk6, ‘prison’) for 辱 (‘shame’) in that idiom, the victim spelt out two main reasons – shame and imprisonment – why he decided to put an end to his own life in such a tragic manner. This example is reminiscent of the prominent role of punning in Freudian psychoanalysis, especially dream analysis (Culler 1988, Redfern 1984). Culler, for example, notes that: Since we think of dreams as sequences of images – visual rather than verbal representations – it is particularly striking, and remarkable evidence for the psychic centrality of punlike mechanisms when, as repeatedly happens in Freud’s dream analyses, the link between a dream image and the day’s residue turns out to be a word functioning as pun. For instance, a dream with a touch of absurdity about driving in a cab is linked
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with concerns about ancestry through the [German] word Vorfahren (‘drive up’ but also ‘ancestry’). (Culler 1988: 10) Accordingly, a case may be made for the pun in this tragic example being due to the suicidal victim ‘hearing and seeing double’ when writing the four-syllable sequence in (10). A caveat of this analysis, however, is that given the victim’s state of mind, the self-mockery in the pun may or may not have been intended (i.e., wrong choice of Chinese character cannot be ruled out). What matters is that the ambiguity will hardly be missed by literate readers who are familiar with that Chinese four-syllable sequence. As can be expected, punning is often exploited in political discourse, especially in the form of satire in columns and cartoons, making clear reference to well-identified news-makers. For example, in 1999, in the middle of the sociopolitical controversy concerning whether to grant the right of abode to children who were born to Hong Kong Chinese parents and who overstayed after coming to Hong Kong either on two-way permits or illegally, the decision of the Court of Final Appeal (CFA) was the focus of the entire dispute. The Chinese term for CFA is 終 審 法 院 (zung1 sam2 faat3 jyun2), literally ‘final-appeal-court’. In one cartoon, the cartoonist satirizes the HKSAR government’s decision to request the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress in Beijing to re-interpret the clause in the Basic Law governing the right of abode in the HKSAR. The cartoon consists of three boxes, featuring a protagonist who bears the title 董 事 長, dung2 si6 zoeng2, ‘Managing Director’ – a clear reference to the then Chief Executive, based on resemblance of the cartoon figure to him, as well as his family name 董, which is romanized in the English media as ‘Tung’. In the three boxes, the Managing Director/Chief Executive is portrayed as thinking aloud as follows: (11)
a.
The SAR government respects judiciary independence very much, and it also values opinions of legal experts in the Mainland.
b.
These two things are like oil and water, totally incompatible with each other. How can (I) reconcile them?… Yes, that’s it!
c.
[Looking at the CFA building with a new Chinese name: 中 審 法 院 ‘Chinese/final appeal court’] That way, (the interests of) both sides are taken into account.
The satire is realized by replacing the first morpho-syllable in the Chinese term for CFA, 終 (zung1) meaning ‘final’, with a homophone signaling ‘China’ or ‘Chinese’, 中, viz. 中 審 法 院, literally ‘Chinese appeal court’, hence the punned satire ‘Court of
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Chinese (Final) Appeal’, where the ultimate decision appears to rest, not in the prized independent judicial system of the SAR, but in the central government. Political satire is of course not limited to cartoons; nor is it something new after the handover. Back in the mid-1990s during the marathon Sino-British negotiations over the political future of Hong Kong, Beijing’s appointment of over 100 Hongkongers as găngshì gùwèn (港 事 顧 問, gong2 si6 gu3 man6, ‘Hong Kong affairs consultant’) was heavily criticized by the pro-democracy faction. One consequence of this row was a popular pun widely used in the press, from serious features and hard news stories to more light-hearted columns and cartoons: those dignitaries who got appointed as honorary consultants were characterized as pro-Beijing and nicknamed 講 是 顧 問 ‘yesman consultants’ (literally ‘say-yes-consultant’) based on the homophony of the first two morpho-syllables 港 事 (N-N, ‘Hong Kong affairs’) and 講 是 (V-N, ‘say yes’) in both Putonghua and Cantonese. Since both terms were frequently used in the reporting of the political row over an extended period, the boundary between the two meanings became blurred, to the point that a person invoking gong2 si6 gu3 man6 might feel the need to clarify which meaning was intended. In accordance with the attention-grabbing function assigned to puns, it is not surprising that punning figures in news headlines sometimes. One such example is from Xpressions, a magazine obtainable free of charge along with the English newspaper Sunday Post. The two-page text is in English, but has a self-explanatory title in both Chinese and English, plus a Chinese blurb. The English title is “A virtual dialogue with the Chief Executive”, while the Chinese title contains a pun as follows: (12) 「仿」問 特 首 董 建 華 fong2 man6 dak6 sau2 dung2 gin3 waa4 ‘imitated/interview’ Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa ‘a fictive interview with the Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa’ As is suggested in both the Chinese and English headlines, the “interview” was fictive as it never took place. It touches upon various issues which were raised in the Chief Executive’s second policy address made public in October 1998. The Chinese headline contains a flagged morpho-syllable 「仿」 (fong2), which means ‘imitated’ or ‘faked’ in print, but when pronounced together with its collocation 問 (i.e. fong2 man6), it gives rise to the meaning ‘interview’, hence the double meaning: a fictive/virtual interview.
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Like the examples of (near-) homophonic punning discussed earlier, the puns that form part of Hong Kong political discourse are more easily apprehensible to the eye than to the ear, for the same reason that the punned expressions in print (e.g., 中 審 法 院, 講 是 顧 問,「仿」問) are not considered well-formed or legitimate collocations. And, as shown in the last example, a lack of collocational legitimacy often leads the punster to flag the homophone(s) in the lexical unit, typically using Chinese square brackets in order to signal the need for an ad hoc, special reading. More such examples are discussed in the next section. 3.3 Punning achieved by flagged homophones Substituting a flagged homophone for a target morpho-syllable is a popular punning strategy in our data. One recurrent example is the unusual collocation ‘「息 魔」’ (sik1 mo1, ‘interest demon’) appearing in financial news stories of the Chinese newspaper Hong Kong Economic Times, especially in headlines. Being homophonous with the expression 色 魔 (‘sex maniac’), this flagged expression pokes fun at the adverse, ‘demoniac’ consequences to the economy that an increase in interest rate is likely to trigger. The next example comes from an advert of a hair product which promises bald users that they will see hair grow on their heads again (13). In the middle of the advert is a slogan reiterating the product name in (13) together with the key message in (14): (13) 仙 草 牌 3 0 日 髮 必 生 沖 劑 sin1 cou2 paai4 saam1sap6 jat6 faat3 bit1 sang1 cung1 zai1 magic herb brand 30 day hair will grow sachet ‘Magic Herb Brand 30-days Hair-will-grow Sachet’ (14) 短 短 30 日「髮」現 奇 蹟 dyun2 dyun2 saam1 sap6 jat6 faat3 jin6 kei4 zik1 shortly
30 days
discover
miracle
The Magic Herb Brand 30 days Hair-will-grow Sachet: discover a miracle as hair emerges within just 30 days.’ In this slogan the disyllabic expression, 發 現 (faat3 jin6), meaning ‘discover(y)’ is exploited. The first morpho-syllable is replaced by the flagged homophonous character 「髮」 (‘hair’) which, together with 現, gives rise to an additional meaning: ‘hair
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emerge’. In the rest of the 300-character text written in standard Chinese, punning is used twice in two separate clauses: (15) … 令 有 需 要 人 士, 無「髮」改 變 ! … ling6 jau5 seoi1 jiu3 jan4 si6 mou4 faat3 goi2 bin3 … let have-need people no hair/method change ‘… making it impossible for needy people to change their hairless situation!’ (16) … 令 您 重 新「髮」現 生 機 ! … ling6 nei5 cung4 san1 faat3 jin6 sang1 gei1, … let you again ‘hair’ emerge/discover vitality ‘… let you rediscover the vitality of your hair!’ The pun in (16) is a repetition of the pun used in the slogan discussed above (‘discover’ / ‘hair emerge’), whereas the one in (15), 無「髮」(mou4 faat3, ‘no hair’ / ‘no method’), is based on homophony (faat3) of the two characters 髮, ‘hair’ and 法, ‘method’. Canon promotes two models of color ink-jet printers in an advert by offering a Photo Deluxe CD Rom free of charge, which is the selling point. The graphics consist of three creative products using photos in the CD Rom: a calendar, a birthday card and a greeting card. The slogan is compact and rich in meanings: (17) 「相」做 乜 都 得… soeng2 zou6 mat1 dou1 dak1 ‘photo’/want make whatever also can ‘(you) can make whatever photos (you) want (with Photo Deluxe CD ROM)’ The flagged morpho-syllable meaning ‘photo’, together with the homophonous verb being alluded to (想, soeng2, ‘want’, ‘think’), thus produces the desired reading: ‘you can make whatever photos you want’. There are two underlying topic-comment structures in this punned slogan: the flagged version has the noun ‘photo’ (相) as topic: ‘photo, whatever (you) want to do with it’; another topic consists of a V-O structure (想 做 乜), hence the meaning ‘whatever (you) want to do, it is possible’. In another advert put up by the furniture manufacturer, IKEA, the company name is itself a pun in Cantonese, 宜 家 (ji4 gaa1): in addition to being homophonous with the Cantonese adverb ‘now’, it attracts the association ‘suitable home’ when the two morpho-syllables are interpreted literally. The attention-grabber of the advert takes
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the form of a question alluding clearly to a well-established four-syllable sequence 垂 手 可 得 (seoi4 sau2 ho2 dak1, ‘easily obtainable’), with the first character 垂 being replaced by a flagged homophone 「誰」 (seoi4, ‘who?’; seoi4 sau2, ‘whose hand?’). Further, visually the first two characters are separated from the rest by some space, thus encouraging a topic-comment reading. The result is an extremely parsimoniously worded but semantically rich and complex slogan: (18) 宜 家
「誰」手 可 得 ?
ji4 gaa1 seoi4 sau2 ho2 dak1 IKEA/now ‘whose’ hand can get / easily obtainable ‘IKEA (products are) now easily obtainable; whose hands can get (them)?’ The gloss here hardly exhausts the semantic richness produced by the syntactic complexity of the slogan. The disyllabic lexical unit 宜家 in the initial position is interpretable as both a topicalized object (‘IKEA (products), whose hands can get (them) now?’) or a thematized adverb (‘now, IKEA (products are up for grabs; let’s see) who will get (them)’). It is thus a good illustration of punning at its best, with both lexical and syntactic ramifications. In another small advert, Hong Kong Economic Times promotes a financial weekly distributed on Monday free of charge along with the newspaper. The complimentary weekly emphasizes quick access to expert opinions which can help the reader manage their own investment more efficiently. Reading that weekly is compared to keeping one’s purse or pocket open to let money in. Such a message is cleverly punned into a popular saying in Cantonese: 唔 係 你 財, 唔 入 你 袋! (m4 hai6 nei5 coi4, m4 jap6 nei5 doi6, ‘If it is not your money, it won’t go into your pocket’) by substituting a homophone 理 (lei5, ‘manage’) for the pronoun 你 (nei5, variously pronounced with /l/ or /n/) in the first clause as follows: (19) 唔 係「理」財,
自然唔入您袋!
m4 hai6 lei5 coi4 zi6 jin4 m4 jap6 nei5 doi6 not ‘manage’/your money naturally not enter your pocket ‘(If your) money is not properly managed, naturally it won’t go into your pocket’ This modified saying appears near the top of the advert. The target meaning is graphically reinforced by coins adorned by the ‘＄’ sign, finding their way into a
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money bag, hence the implicit message: ‘the financial weekly of Hong Kong Economic Times is an absolute must-read for smart investors managing their own money’. In a number of adverts, the pun bears on Cantonese colloquialisms whose written forms vary considerably depending on the user. This is partly due to a popular misconception, largely reinforced through formal schooling, that Cantonese is a ‘dialect’ with no written representations of its own. Such a misconception is widespread, despite the vitality of written Cantonese in public discourse owing to its unique sociolinguistic development in Hong Kong since the 1950s (Snow 2004). This misconception is partly reinforced by considerable variation in the way Cantonesespecific morpho-syllables are written (Li 2000). The looseness of written Cantonese is clearly reflected in the examples of punning in our data (compare (5)). In one advert, the Japanese electrical appliances company SHARP (聲 寶 牌) promotes two models of ‘super quiet’ ( 超 靜 ) air-conditioners by emphasizing quietness as an outstanding feature of their engines – an edge which they allegedly have over business rivals. The attention-grabber consists of a fine sketch of a technological device attached to a motor, which supposedly makes this ‘super quietness’ possible, and a slogan which exploits the adverb 淨 係 (zing6 hai6, ‘only’) by substituting the flagged homophonous character 靜 (‘quiet’) for the first morpho-syllable of this adverb as follows: (20) 「靜」係 聲 寶 夠 冷 靜 ! zing6 hai6 sing1 bou2 gau3 laang5 zing6 ‘quiet’ is / only SHARP enough cold quiet ‘As for quietness, only SHARP is cold and quiet enough!’ The same character 靜 is also found in the disyllabic adjective at the end of this slogan: 冷 靜 (laang5 zing6), which usually means ‘calm’, ‘cool-headed’, but is used here deliberately and analytically for its literal meanings, ‘cold’ and ‘quiet’, respectively. These literal meanings are further reinforced by a smiling cartoon figure – an ant wearing sun glasses with one hand holding a cold drink, another hand pointing at a stylized air-conditioner while sunbathing on a beach chair shielded by an umbrella. The punning effect as indicated in the gloss is arguably achieved through the amalgamation of two more or less discrete messages, which are conveyed by two structurally rather dissimilar clauses: (a) S-V: ‘only SHARP is cold and quiet enough’; (b) T-C: ‘as for quietness, it is SHARP which is cold and quiet enough’. In the T-C reading, the only
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visual cue which marks the topic off from the comment is square brackets (「靜」). In the absence of a comma, the T-C structure is difficult to obtain. Further, the association between 「靜」係 (‘quietness’ is…) and 淨 係 (‘only’) is obscure at best in the first reading, hence the relatively low quality of the pun. In all of the examples involving homophony-based punning discussed above, only the onset phoneme is affected (e.g. the substitution of /l/ for /n/), while the rime and the tone level remain constant. There are however a few examples of near-homophonic punning in our data where the rime is affected. In early 1993, the Mass Transit Railway Company (MTR) held a poster-slogan competition to promote public awareness of environmental protection. The selection process and criteria were not made public. The winning posters featuring slogans written in jumbo-sized characters were later displayed in illuminated light boxes of every MTR station for about a month. It turned out that some of these winning slogans exploited near-homophony by deliberately alluding to a few obscene expressions in Cantonese. Two of the more controversial ones are as follows: (21) 乜 你 冇 籃 用 mat1 nei5 mou5 laam2 jung6 how come you no basket use ‘how come you are not using a basket (and keep asking for plastic bags)’ (22) 邊 個 話 冇 膠 唔 得 bin1 go3 waa6 mou5 gaau1 m4 dak1 who say no plastic won’t do ‘who said (you) can’t do away with plastic (bags)?’ Out of context, the words 籃 (laam2, ‘basket’) and 膠 (gaau1, ‘plastic’) look innocent enough. The problem is, in the collocations as shown, these slogans sound sufficiently close to vulgar, obscene expressions alluding to the male genital organ (lan2 / gau1). Consequently, the slogan appealing for the use of shopping baskets may also be construed as saying ‘you’re no bloody use!’, while the one discouraging the use of plastic bags could alternatively be heard as ‘who said no cock won’t do?’. Following a great deal of public criticisms, including in hard news stories, MTR finally withdrew the posters. At the center of social concern were two near-homophonous puns: laam2 ‘basket’ for lan2 ‘penis’, and gaau1 ‘plastic’ for gau1 ‘cock’. In sharp contrast to the
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provocative punning effect is the relatively simple shift in pronunciation, namely, the replacement of a long vowel by a short vowel, in addition to a shift from syllable-final /m/ (laam2) to /n/ (lan2) in (21). Interestingly, as in other examples of homophonybased punning, the tone level is kept constant. We hope to have demonstrated that punning occurs in a great variety of genres and text types in Chinese print and broadcast media in Hong Kong, including political satire, social news headlines, radio and TV program titles, protest banners, pseudonyms of columnists, titles of columns, place names, catchy slogans and of course, miscellaneous adverts and promotional discourse in general. The main function of punning may be broadly characterized as ‘poetic’, in that the pun is motivated primarily by the punster’s attempt to enhance the communicative impact of the message through some unexpected, witty association. Sometimes, when some negative meanings are thought to be associated with an expression in public discourse – meanings typically amplified in the media – it may meet with social disapproval and have to be withdrawn in the end, despite the disclaimer that the perceived punning effect is unintended (cf. Ahl 1988: 23). Advertisers, in particular, seem to have a penchant for language play using various semiotic resources – including languages other than Cantonese – in the process of fashioning an eye-catching attention-grabber. To assess the extent to which punning figures in local adverts, we conducted a small-scale one-day survey of adverts appearing in illuminated light boxes of one MTR station, Kowloon Tong, on May 23, 2005. To keep the task within manageable limits, only the 136 light boxes at the platform and concourse levels were surveyed. 4. ONE-DAY SURVEY OF ADVERTS IN ILLUMINATED LIGHT BOXES OF ONE MTR STATION Of the 136 illuminated light boxes (106 landscape and 30 portrait in shape), seven of about 120 adverts of miscellaneous products or events (types rather than tokens) with punning were identified. The pun is typically embedded in the slogan or event name at the eye-level. The ratio of adverts containing punning as a rhetorical device is thus not so high: only about six per cent. In terms of punning strategy, three of them employ homonymy, three homophony, while the last one employs both. The direction of Chinese writing follows the order as in the originals: from left to right unless otherwise stated; original colors are omitted (see Table 1). Given the increasing preference for multi-modal representation of adverts (Lock 2003), it should be noted that the analysis in Table 1 is far from being an
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exhaustive account of the semiotic potential of the seven adverts featuring punning in the slogan or event name. Additional nuances may be derived from the way other semiotic resources such as graphics, colors, and icons (including the celebrity selected as spokesperson for the product/service/event advertised) are deployed. 5. DISCUSSION In this paper, both homonymy and homophony have been shown to be commonly used punning strategies in Hong Kong Chinese media, especially in adverts. This point has received some support in the quantitative results of the small-scale survey of adverts appearing in illuminated light boxes of one MTR hub for one day. The syntactic frame exploited is a lexical unit which is generally expected to be familiar to the audience, for example, four-syllable sequences (see (10), (18) and (23)). A four-syllable sequence is a lexical unit with fixed collocations referring to some dictum or folk wisdom serving as guide to proper behavior, or a proverb alluding to some significant historical event. Where the punned meaning is judged to be obscure, especially when the punning effect is achieved through near-homophony, Chinese square brackets functionally akin to scare-quotes in English are often used in the printed medium to alert readers to the need for an ad hoc, special reading. In the lucrative domain of advertising where punning is actively used, whether homonymy or homophony is preferred by the copywriter depends on the type of product or service being marketed. This point may be illustrated by two contrastive examples in our data. Thus in two separate adverts, the same four-syllable sequence is used as the syntactic frame for punning, each for their own purpose. The four-syllable sequence being alluded to is a philosophical-sounding motto 知 足 常 樂 (zi1 zuk1 soeng4 lok6, ‘a person who is contented with what he/she has is always happy’). In a two-page magazine advert of Dr. Kong 足 科 保 健 中 心 (‘Dr. Kong foot health care center’), the same four-syllable sequence appears in the heading, except that the morpho-syllable 「足」 (zuk1, ‘enough’) is flagged. As this character may also mean ‘foot’, the intended interpretation in context thus becomes: ‘know (your) feet (by consulting Dr. Kong) and be happy always’. What is exploited in this advert is clearly the homonymic potential of 足 (zuk1): ‘enough’ and ‘foot’. Another advert of a congee and noodles shop, however, alludes to the same four-syllable sequence but replaces the two characters in the middle with two flagged homophones (zuk1, ‘congee’; soeng4, ‘taste’) as follows:
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Table 1: Analysis of punning in seven adverts in MTR illuminated light boxes on 23/05/2005 Advert put up by Samsung Digital Camera
Punned slogan (pun in bold type) 最出色的新寵 就在我手中 zeoi3 ceot1 sik1 dik1 san1 cung2 zau6 zoi6 ngo5 sau2 zung1 ‘The most outstanding favorite [camera] with the sharpest colors is in my hand’
Orbis 奧比斯
百聞 不如一見
Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC)
問你點算 […]* 假如今日沒有 ICAC
Punning strategy and relevant visual information Homonymy: literal reanalysis of 出色 (ceot1 sik1; compare example (6) above);
Primary meaning Secondary punned of manifesting meaning and mark comments ceot1 sik1: Literally ‘out-color’, disyllabic i.e. ‘colors stand out adjective sharply’ ‘outstanding’
all 11 morpho-syllables appear on the same line in the original; the character 色 appears in larger font.
Homonymy: literal man4: ‘hear’ (v.) reanalysis of idiom baak3 man4 bat1 jyu4 ‘hearing a hundred times is not as clear as jat1 gin3 seeing once’; ‘hearing / smelling Orbis Ambassador, Ah (something) a Lam, is seen holding a hundred times is not as clear as seeing (it) flower, showing it to a smiling little girl who can once’ now see (presumably blind before)
‘smell’ (v.); emphasis on ‘一見’ (jat1 gin3, ‘to see once’), reinforced by the picture of little girl who, having recovered her sight with the help of Orbis, now enjoys seeing (and smelling) the flower
Homonymy: literal reanalysis of 點算;
dim2 syn3 (adv-v structure): ‘what to do?’
dim2 syn3 (adv-v structure): ‘ how-calculate’ / ‘how-compute’ (in mathematical sense: literally ‘how to calculate?’)
滋 zi1: ‘delicious’; 之 zi1: function word meaning (i) variant of nominaliser
the collocation alluded to, 清新之 選, gives the meaning: ‘fresh choices’
man6 nei5 dim2 syn3 gaa2 jyu4 gam1 jat6 mut6 jau5 ICAC ‘What to do / How to calculate ‘1+2=1’ if there is no ICAC today’
McDonald's 清新滋選 Fresh choices menu cing1 san1 zi1 syun2 ‘refreshing and delicious choices’
all words appear vertically in the ad; [...]*: sum of 1 and 2 = 1, suggesting unfairness; the three functional parts are clearly presented in different colors and font sizes Homophony: 滋 zi1 is homophonous with 之, which is alluded to in the syntactic frame: 清新___選,
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cing1 san1 ___ syn2; dik1 / ge3; character 滋 appears in (ii) possessive a different color and font marker
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Table 1 (cont’d) 浸信會 Baptist Church
(1) YEAH SHOW (2) 吾男 吾女 m4 naam4 m4 neoi5: ‘my male [and] my female audience’, ‘regardless of gender’
‘YEAH SHOW’: homophone of 耶穌 (je4 so1, ‘Jesus’); 吾 (m4, ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’): homophone of 唔 (‘not’); ‘YEAH SHOW’: stand-up comedy not like others; the priest, Mr. Lam, gives a trendy show about Jesus; subtitles: why [Jesus’s] male [sons] are so difficult to put up with; and why [Jesus’s] female [daughters] are so tolerant and enduring
香港融樂 會 Unison H.K. and 樂施會 Oxfam
少啲認色。 多啲認識。
香港藝術 節 Hong Kong Arts Festival
亞洲 雜種 舞力 劇場
siu5 di1 jing6 sik1. do1 dik1 jing6 sik1. ‘less differentiation of colors; more recognition / knowledge’
YEAH SHOW: ‘a brilliant show about Jesus’; 吾男 吾女 m4 naam4 m4 neoi5: ‘my male my female’ ‘neither male nor female’
Homophony: 色 (sik1) is homophonous with 識 ; 色 and 認識 appear in different colors; In small print above the signature line is a bilingual message, of which the English version: ‘People do not discriminate by nature, they learn it.’
認色 jing6 sik1: ‘differentiate colors’ ‘differentiation of colors’;
Homonymy: 雜種 zaap6 zung2; Homophony: 舞力 mou5 lik6;
雜種 zaap6 zung2: ‘bastard’;
亞洲雜種舞力劇場 eight big characters filling up half the space aa3 zau1 zaap6 zung2 mou5 lik6 kek6 on left of advert as shown; coeng4 In small print ‘Asian mixed dance-power theatre’. (Cantonese and based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet): ‘six little Asian princes [of modern dance] demonstrate Asia’s new force / power through dance’
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耶穌 (je4 so1), ‘Jesus’; 唔: (m4), ‘not’
認色 (V-N structure) and 認識 (disyllabic verb) in a similar syntactic frame (siu2 di1__ vs. do1 di1 ___) and 認識 jing6 sik1: juxtaposed in ‘recognize / know’ parallel to facilitate / ‘recognition / comparison and knowledge’ contrast, both semantically and syntactically
舞力 mou5 lik6, ‘dance-power’; 舞 homophonous with 武: ‘martial arts’, ‘military’; 力 lik6: ‘force’, ‘power’, ‘energy’
雜種 (zaap6 zung2): ‘mixed species’ 武力 (mou5 lik4): ‘military force’, ‘violence’
(23)
知 「粥」 「嘗」 樂 zi1 zuk1
soeng4 lok6
know ‘congee’ ‘taste’ happy ‘know (which) congee (to order) and (you will) be happy to taste (it)’ We have also come across cases of apparent homonymy involving Cantonese morpho-syllables whose written forms are non-standard and whose currency is unclear. Compared with punning through homonymy in English (e.g. Culler 1988; Redfern 1984), homonymic punning achieved by ‘pseudo-homonymy’ based on lexical borrowings in Cantonese seems to be more common in Hong Kong Chinese media (see (5); cf. Li 2000). An interesting research question that arises is whether the colloquial, non-standard nature of ‘written Cantonese’ facilitates punning. That is, since bilingual and bidialectal speakers are generally equipped with a larger linguistic repertoire compared with, say, monolingual speakers of English or Mandarin, could it be that they are more prone to punning and other forms of language play by virtue of the fact that they have comparatively more linguistic resources at their disposal? This is clearly one area where more contrastive research is needed. Compared with homonymy, there are many more examples of punning in our data which are achieved by (near-) homophony. Heller (1980, 1983) shows that orthographically different but phonologically similar word forms may give rise to punning provided there is sufficient syntactic redundancy in context to invoke the intended double entendre and ‘audience reaction’. Thus in the following example which takes place in a hospital setting, the signaling devices (nurse and wards) differ from the anticipated words (worse and words) only by one phoneme (in speech) and one or two graphemes (in writing), respectively (Heller 1980: 310f): (24) The patient took a turn for the nurse. She was too beautiful for wards.
[anticipated word: worse] [anticipated word: words]
Here, the meaning potential of worse and nurse, wards and words, is assured by two linguistic factors: partial (rather than absolute) phonological and orthographic identity on one hand, and the contexts at large (took a turn for the _____; too beautiful for ____) on the other (Heller 1980: 311). Many of the homophone-based punning examples in our data work in a similar way, in that the substitution of a (near-) homophone in praesentia for a target morpho-syllable in absentia is enough to call attention to identity,
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absolute or partial, between the signaling device and the double correlations with or without flagging. One interesting observation of punning achieved by near-homophony in our Chinese data is that it tends to be more apparent in the written than in the spoken medium, for when uttered in speech, the punning effect may not be easily recognized by the listener. This is so because the morpho-syllables in praesentia give rise to lexical units or syntactic structures which are either ill-formed or illegitimate, resulting in potential recognition problems. With regard to Heller’s (1980, 1983) general typology of punning categories: ‘retentional, non-disambiguational puns’ vs. ‘non-retentional, disambiguational puns’, we believe the selection of punning examples primarily from print media tends to make them biased towards the former. This is probably because seeing a punned message is qualitatively different from hearing it, for, what is missed by the ear may be made up by what meets the eye, including graphics and other visual information designed to ‘echo’ the literal meaning(s) of the signaling device. This point is true of punning in English as well as in Chinese. Thus one supermarket famous for fine foods, beverages and other delicacies from different countries goes by the name ‘great’. Whereas hardly any punned meaning is discernible to the ear, an orthographic pun is unmistakable to the eye since the last three letters (i.e. ‘eat’) stand out sharply in a different color, inviting associations such as ‘a great place for buying fine foods to eat’. In another advert put up by an electronic payment service provider in 2006, the attention-grabbing slogan puns on a block-buster film called ‘Kill Bill’. The written version of the slogan is written in upper-case: ‘KILL BILLS’, making the object interpretable as either persons named Bill or written statements of money due. To readers who are accustomed to capitalizing the first letter of a personal name, however, the intended double entendre would be neutralized if the signaling device was written in lower case (i.e. ‘kill bills’; cf. Heller 1980). A very similar analysis applies to the slogan of an advert for mobile phones: ‘One2Free’. In our data discussed above, only two examples approximate Heller’s characterization of ‘non-retentional, disambiguational’ puns (21 and 22), in which the punning effect is achieved through near-homophony, with significant difference in the rimes of the morpho-syllable. Thus the link between the morpho-syllables 籃 (laam2, ‘basket’) and 膠 (gaau1, ‘plastic’) and the obscene meanings alluded to (lan2, ‘penis’; gau1, ‘cock’) are more indirect, both phonologically and orthographically. Consequently, at first sight the intended punned meanings in (21) and (22) may not be obvious to Cantonese-literate readers. Further, consistent with Heller’s observation, in
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most of the examples discussed above, the punning effect is specific to the printed medium (orthographic puns) and so punning is generally blocked in the spoken medium. Finally, Heller’s notion of ‘functional shift’ also seems relevant to those instances of punning in our data where syntactic re-analysis is involved. 6. CONCLUSION In this paper, we have examined the forms and functions of punning in Hong Kong Chinese media and exemplified two main punning strategies – homonymy and homophony. In particular, punning is sometimes used in adverts to enhance their attention-grabbing function. As the primary objective of advertising is to attract viewers’ or readers’ attention, the semantic relationship between the overt, primary meaning of the signaling device and covert, punned meaning(s) alluded to may range from being close to opaque. In the latter case, the punned expression may be flagged by square brackets to alert the viewer or reader to the need for an ad hoc, special reading. This is often supplemented by graphics and other visual information designed to make explicit the literal meaning of the punned expression intended. Beyond the domain of advertising where the pun aims at making the advertiser’s message easier to remember, punning also figures commonly in soft news sections such as comic strips, infotainment news stories and columns, pseudonyms and titles of books and shops, as well as photo captions and occasionally news headlines. The punster may be an advertising copywriter, a cartoonist, a columnist, a journalist, or a news-maker, among others. The exact motivation of the punster may vary depending on context. A pun may be motivated by such context-specific communicative purposes as humor and irony. The general function of punning may be broadly described as ‘poetic’, in that it serves primarily to add spice to the punster’s message by enhancing its communicative impact. Among the most interesting cases of punning in such cases are those where the meanings associated with a pun are perceived as social taboo and are therefore contested in the media, making the pun the focus of a controversial social issue (see (21) and (22)). The legitimacy of obscene puns is hotly debated probably because punning “triggers responses of fear as well as ritual groans and laughter” (Ahl 1988: 23). According to Peter Farb (1973), obscene puns, which are widely perceived as a debased form of wit, are feared in English-speaking communities in general: The obscene pun is dangerous because it cleverly attacks the sacredness of taboo words, and it manages to do so with an innocent appearance. A
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dirty story usually leads up to the punch line by the use of taboo words, but a well-fashioned obscene pun never overtly uses obscene words. Rather, the pun allows two different words, which are pronounced in the same way, to be substituted for each other. Usually one of the two ambiguous words is taboo, but the teller of the pun claims innocence by leaving it up to the listener to connect the innocent and the taboo meanings. (Farb 1973, cited in Ahl 1988: 23) With minor modification, Farb’s insight seems to apply equally well to the controversial MTR slogans in (21) and (22). In sum, we believe this paper has barely scratched the surface of a very rich research area that straddles linguistics and stylistics, namely, punning and miscellaneous forms of language play in Hong Kong Chinese media and public discourse. In comparison with other areas of Chinese linguistics, the theorizing of the how and why of language play seems to be under-represented. In this regard, Heller’s (1980, 1983) general typology of punning seems a promising starting point for comparing cross-linguistic similarities and differences of relevant factors behind punning, such as medium-specific punning (e.g., orthographic puns), the similarities and differences of puns achieved in different writing systems (e.g., alphabetic vs. logographic), the possible facilitating role of non-standard, dialectal elements in the crafting of punned messages, to name just a few. It is our hope that this study will help inspire interested readers to undertake more serious work in this fascinating under-researched area.
NOTES 1. This project was partly supported by CityU small scale grant 9030661 “Punning in English and Chinese advertisements in the Hong Kong print media: A comparison”. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer(s) for many insightful comments on an earlier draft. We alone are responsible for any inadequacies that remain. 2. Depending on content and context, xiéyīn may be found in folk wisdom encapsulated in the form of a ‘tail-less pun’ (Baker, 1991). This term was coined to capture the fact that the pun occurring in the second part of a two-part structure is often left unsaid because it is tacitly understood. For example:
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(25) 和 尚 打 傘
[無髮無天]
héshàng dá săn
wú fă wú tiān
wo4 soeng2 daa2 saan3
mou4 faat3 mou4 tin1
monk hold umbrella
no hair/law no sky/Heaven’s law/justice
‘like a monk holding an umbrella: no hair/law and no sky/Heaven’s law/justice’ A speaker/writer who invokes the first part of the tail-less pun in (25) appears to be talking about monks holding umbrellas. To those who have no knowledge of the second part to this tail-less pun, it would seem like a riddle. But those who do know the (hidden) addendum, wú fă wú tiān, will appreciate that the real, intended meaning hinges on two punned morpho-syllables: the second morpho-syllable 髮 (fă) ‘hair’ is homophonous with 法 meaning ‘law’; while the last morpho-syllable 天 (tiān) ‘sky’ has other related meanings relevant here: ‘Heaven’s Law’ or ‘justice’, hence the intended gloss of the addendum: ‘no law and no justice’, that is, an extreme state of lawlessness or anarchy. 3. A similar strategy of punning by omission may be found in xiéyīn cángcí (諧 音 藏 詞, ‘punning in hidden homophonic words’, Yuan 1994), where the pun is embedded in what is left out, resulting in a riddle. Kang (1993: 71f) reports one such interesting case – a duìlián (‘antithetical couplet’) displayed vertically on both sides of the door of a poor peasant family which consists solely of numbers. One side reads 二 三 四 五 (èr sān sì wŭ, ‘two three four five’), the other side reads 六 七 八 九 (liù qī bā jiŭ, ‘six seven eight nine’). The clue to this riddle lies not so much in what one sees as what is missing in the number sequence. Once the reader notes that the missing numbers are 一 (yī, ‘one’) and 十 (shí, ‘ten’), the duìlián will begin to make sense: since yī (‘one’) is homophonous with yī (衣, ‘clothing’), and shí(‘ten’) has the same pronunciation as shí (食, ‘eating’, ‘food’), the meaning 缺 衣 缺 食 (què yī què shí, ‘lacking clothing and lacking food’) suggests itself. This duìlián is thus a witty way of voicing the peasants’ plight of not having enough to wear and eat (see also Yuan 1994: 316f). REFERENCES AHL, Frederick. 1988. Ars Est Caelare Artem (Art in puns and anagrams engraved). In On puns, ed. by Jonathan Culler (ed.), 17-43. London: Blackwell. BAKER, Hugh D.R. 1991. The English sandwich: obscenity, punning and bilingualism in Hong Kong Cantonese. In Interpreting culture through translation: a
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festschrift for D.C. Lau, ed. by Roger T. Ames, Chan Sin-wai, Ng Mau-sang, 37-58. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. CHAO, Yuen Ren. 1976. Ambiguity in Chinese. In Aspects of Chinese sociolinguistics. Essays by Yuen Ren Chao. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. CHEN Wangdao. 1962/1976. Xiūcíxué fāfán (“Introduction to rhetoric”). Shanghai Jiàoyù Chūbănshè. CULLER, Jonathan. 1988 (ed.). On puns. London: Blackwell. EMPSON, William. 1930/1984. Seven types of ambiguity. London: Hogarth Press. FAN, G., LEE, T., LUN, C., LUKE, K.K., TUNG, P. and CHEUNG, K.H. 1997. 粵語 拼音字表 (Yuèyŭ pìnyīn zìbiăo, ‘Cantonese Romanization and character list’). Linguistic Society of Hong Kong. HELLER, Louis G. 1980. Toward a general typology of the pun. In Linguistic perspectives on literature, ed. by Marvin K. L. Ching, Michael C. Haley, and Ronald F. Lunsford, 305-318. London: Routledge. _____. 1983. Pun, ironies (plural), and other type-4 patterns. Poetics Today 4:3, 437-449. HUANG, Qingxuan. 1994. Xiūcíxué (‘The study of rhetoric’). Taipei: Sānmín Shūjú. KANG, Jialong. 1993. Zhōngguó yŭwén qùtán (‘Characteristics of the Chinese language illustrated with witticisms’). Taipei: Yúnlóng Chūbănshè. LI, David C.S. 2000. Phonetic borrowing: Key to the vitality of written Cantonese in Hong Kong. Written Language & Literacy 3:2, 199-233. LOCK, Graham. 2003. Being international, local and Chinese: advertisements on the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway. Visual Communication 2: 195-214. RAO, Bingcai, OUYANG Jueya & ZHOU Wuji. 1981. Guăngzhōuhuà fāngyán cídiăn (‘Dictionary of Cantonese dialect’). Hong Kong: Commercial Press. REDFERN, Walter. 1984. Puns. London: Blackwell. SNOW, Donald. 2004. Cantonese as a written language: the growth of a written Chinese vernacular. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. SUN, Yuzhen. 1987. Xiūcí Gŭjīn tán (“An essay on ancient and contemporary rhetoric”). Shānxī Rénmín Chūbănshè. TAN, Yongxiang. 1993. Xiūcí jīngpĭn liùshígé (‘Sixty refined rhetorical devices’). Shānxī Rémín Chūbănshè. WANG, Zhongcheng. 1998. Guănggào jīnjù jíjĭn (‘A selection of advertising golden phrases’). Beijing: Zhōngguó Cáizhèng Jīngjì Chūbănshè.
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WU, Jiazhen. 1992. Dāngdài Hànyŭ xiūcí yìshù (“The art of contemporary Chinese rhetoric”). Beijing: Běijīng Shīfàn Xuéyuàn Chūbănshè. XIA, Ming & LUO Sihong. 1994. Baòhàn guănggaò shíwù zhĭnán (‘A practical guide to print media ads’). Beijing: Zhōngguó Yŏuyí Chūbăn Gōngsī. YANG, Shuda. 1960. Hànwén wényán xiūcíxué (‘The study of rhetoric in classical Chinese’). Hong Kong: Shangwu Publishing Co. YAO, Youwei. 1999. Yōumò yŭ xiūcí: yĭ Zhōngguó lìdài yùyán xuănjí wéi lì (‘Humor and rhetoric: as exemplified in Selected works of Chinese allegories in successive dynasties’). In Xiūcí Lùncóng (‘Collection of essays on rhetoric’), ed. by Wang Jingzhi, vol. 1, 265-284. Taipei: Taiwan Normal University. YUAN, Xianzhong. 1994. Hànyŭ xiéyīn yu hànjŭ wénhuà (‘Homophonic punning in Han Chinese and ethnic Han culture’). In Yŭfă xiūci lùn (‘Essays on syntax and rhetoric’), ed. by Pan Xiaodong, 314-324. Zhéjiāng Jiàoyù Chūbănshè. ZHAN, Bowai. 2002. Guăngzhōuhuà zhèngyīn zìdiăn (‘Cantonese standard pronunciation dictionary’). Guăngdōng Rénmín Chūbănshè.
双关语在香港中文媒体中的形式与功能 李 楚 成 Virginia Costa 香港城市大学 提要 双 关 乃 修 辞 技 巧 之 一， 常 见 于 香 港 中 文 传 媒 之 中， 尤 以 广 告 为 甚。双 关 语 的 主 要 作 用 是 加 强 信 息 之 感 染 力。英 语 文 献 之 中，双 关 语 的 研 究 介 乎 风 格 学 与 语 言 学 之 间。标 示 双 关 语 的 手 段 一 般 为 同 形 同 音 异 义 词 及 同 音 (或 语 音 相 近 的) 异 义 词。本 文 参 照 了 Heller (1980, 1983) 从 语 言 学 角 度 研 究 所 得 的 双 关 语 分 类，对 部 份 香 港 中 文 双 关 语 材 料 进 行 了 分 析，结 果 显 示 大 部 份 的 双 关 语 属 「双 关 语 义 成 份 获 保 留 / 不 会 消 除」 之 类 别。很 多在书写方面显性很强的双关语语意转到口语的时候显性 便 会 消 失。另 一 发 现 是 标 示 双 关 语 的 句 子 或 词 组，存 有 词 性 功 能 转 换 的 情 况 颇 为 普 遍。
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关键词 双 关 语，歧 义，广 告，文 字 游 戏，同 音 异 义 词，同 形 同 音 异 义 词
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