Use of Puns and the Literal Translation of Words and Idioms in Humorous Discourse
Journal Title: UNKNOWN - Year 2017, Vol 3, Issue 0
Abstract
Puns revolve around two or more semantically incompatible meanings as they are formed by polysemic and homophonic words used in a certain context. According to the incongruity theory of humour, humour is created due to incongruity between expectation and reality. All kinds of puns are based on ambiguity principles. This study aims to describe and compare lexical, phonological, morphological, syntactical and idiomatic puns and literal translations used in the context of Urdu sitcoms “Hum sub Umeed say hain” and “Hasb-e-Haal” by the help of descriptive-analytical method. Five episodes of each sitcom are analyzed. The rational of choosing these programs is that they revolve around important social issues and sensitive political themes to highlight and eradicate those problems. Findings indicate that lexical and idiomatic puns occur the most in our data, whereas morphological ambiguity is present least in number. The cause of ambiguity of more than a quarter of the data is due to literal translations and code switching. Since little work (and none to my knowledge in Urdu) has been done on puns and working of humorous literal translations of words and idioms in the context of sitcom and comedy discourse, this paper can be a linguistic contribution to the areas of media and humour studies.
Authors and Affiliations
Ayesha Rashid
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP612861
- DOI 10.29145/2017/llr/030101
- Views 136
- Downloads 0
Identification of Moves Structure in the Discussion Section of Social Sciences Doctoral Research Thesis
This study describes the move structure of sub-genre; the discussion part in the doctoral theses of Pakistani research scholars. The study embraces six disciplines of social sciences, i.e. Education, Economics, Geography...
Feudal System of Pakistan in Daniyal Mueenuddin’s Short Stories: A Marxist Critique
This study analyses the short stories of the Pakistani-American author Daniyal Mueenuddin, in his collection, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders” (Mueenuddin, 2009). The theoretical foundation of this study draws mainly from...
Deconstructive Phenomenological Analysis of Sufi Discourse
This study presents Sufi discourse of Bulleh Shaha and Khawaja Ghulam Farid as a platform to assert the common emerging patterns in Sufi literature. Derrida’s deconstruction is utilised to discover the binaries in Sufi t...
Changing Trends from Traditional to Technology Based Approach: Speech Language Pathologist’s Preferences for Computer Mediated Aphasia Therapy (CMAT) in Pakistan
Aphasia is an acquired neurological disorder of communication with a range of language impairments. Aphasia rehabilitation is becoming an important concern in clinical aphasiology. Traditional approaches for rehabilitati...
A Comparative Analysis of Effectiveness of Learner-centered Approach and Teacher-centered Approach in Writing Skills of undergraduate students
The research article investigates the effectiveness of Learner Centered Approach on the development of writing skills of undergraduate students. It is an experimental study on 60 undergraduate students of first semester...