Reflection on English Pun

何芹

Pun，as a special English figure of speech，aims at building a humorous atmosphere in English language.It is widely used in our daily life，including literature works，translation and advertisement and so on.According to The Oxford English Dictionary，the word pun was defined as“The use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings or different associations，or the use of two or more words of the same or nearly the same sound with different meanings，so as to produce a humorous effect，Nevertheless”，English pun，apart from building humorous atmosphere in English language by playing on word，it can stimulate readers imagination and achieve agreeable or redundant expression，and it is usually used for rhetorical effect such as for emphasis，humor，sarcasm，fun and irony，etc.

However，one point to note here is that English pun is greatly different from the Chinese rhetorical term“shuangguan”.Then，the opinion that they are not always corresponding to each other，to a great extent，was accepted by many scholars.For one thing，“shuangguan”refers to one term with two different meanings.However，English pun，on top of“one”term for two meanings，it may include multiple meanings through using polysemy and homonyms，sometimes，it is also termed“antanaclasis”or“polace”，equivalent to another figure of speech in Chinese“huanyi”.Besides，in recent years，the opinion mentioned above was objectively analyzed and accepted by most of scholars.In addition，discussion about English pun in this paper are mainly based on the authors own reflection.

In terms of research field，based on data from CNKI，the author found that domestic pun researches mainly concentrate on its definition and classification，pragmatic analysis，reorganization mechanism and translation.Besides，it seems that scholars are more inclined to analyze English pun from the last three aspects because there is a little controversy about the first one.In pragmatic analysis，scholars tend to analyze pun based on Grices cooperative principle and the relation theory of Sperber& Wilson，which provided suggestions for people to more effectively communicate or decode in the language-using or communicating process.As for the cognitive mechanism， due to the figure and speech perceptions pertain to same category，and basic rules of the former can represent the latter one.Therefore，many scholars have studied the English pun from figure-background theory.In addition，conceptual blending theory also is accessible to further study English pun.