【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 and wit that Augustus is thinking about women all day long.(20) The number of attorneys who die without a will is amazing. Even where there is no will, there is a way. [12] The first “will” means “statement, document”。 the second means “a person’s power can direct his thoughts or influence others”.Michael Demarest uses this homographic pun to tell us the difference between chronic procrastination and purposeful postponement and make a great satire. Puns on both pronunciation and meaning This kind of pun often embodies the special names of figures in the literary work. When the authors want to portray a person, they often employ this kind of pun to give the person a special name in order to reveal the figure’s character, behavior and fate. Lv Xu expounds this kind of pun with originality。 he thinks that the use of this kind of pun can be vivid in stressing the figure and portraying the character of the figure. Take the following as an example,(21) In Shakespeare’s “King Henry IV”, Sir John Falstatff is not a character who thinks and acts in one or the same way. “In appearance, he is kind, noble, wit and brave, however, in fact, he is a selfish, coward, licentious and wicked man – a truly false stuff [13]. And the word “Falstatff” is similar to “false stuff” in pronunciation. Another example goes like this: In Gilbert Highet’s “The Philosopher and the Conqueror”, this sentence “A titter broke out from the elegant Greeks, who were already beginning to make jokes about the cur that looked at the king.”[14] Here “the cur” refers to Diogenes –the philosopher on one hand, Diogenes acted very rudely toward the great conqueror that everyone else respected and admired, and on the other hand, Diogenes is a cynic philosopher. And the origin of the word “cur” is the Greek word kunikos, meaning “a dog”. So “cur” is a typical feature of Diogene, and the image of Diogene is vivid to us. In ’s “The School for Scandal”, Lady Sneerwell, Sir Benjamin Backbite and Captain Boastall are famous for their respective features: Sneerwell does well in sneering, Benjamin Backbite usually spreads calumnious rumors behind one’s back。 and Captain Boastall likes to talk big. From the above examples, we can see the feature of this kind of pun is to use an object’s traits to express the object itself. And this feature also can be found in another figure of speech – metonymy. For example,(22) The boiled lobster walked into the office.Here “boiled lobster” refers to Britain soldier, because Britain soldiers often wear red uniform.(23) Soapy stood still with his hands in his pockets and smiled at the sight of brass buttons.“Brass buttons” is one of the features of American cop uniform, so here it refers to police.The above analysis indicates that pun is in a certain extent connected with metonymy, about this point。 Li Xinhua’s point is good for understanding the interrelation. He thinks, “English pun belongs to the category of metonymy [15]”. Metonymy is a figure of speech that has to do with the substitution of the name of one thing for that of another, in essence, so does pun. Pun is the use of a word with same or similar pronunciation to express the different meanings, or the use of the same word to suggest different meanings. In a word, no matter it is pronunciation or spelling, it always does with the substitution of the name of one thing for that of another. Therefore, “the substitution of the name of ‘A’ for ‘B’” is the mon feature of pun and metonymy. However, we can’t mix them up, because the formation of puns possesses the following two characteristics.3. Characteristics of English punThe formation of English pun needs two fundamental conditions: ambiguity anddouble context. AmbiguityThe first characteristic of a pun is that the focus of its meaning lies in its ambiguity. No matter whether they are homophones or homographs, the speaker aims to achieve an ambiguity. Ambiguity can be divided into positive and passive ambiguity. Putting the word in the wrong place to cause ambiguity and impairing the effectiveness is called passive ambiguity, while using the polyseme on purpose to enhance the effectiveness is called positive ambiguity. In our daily munication, we try to avoid the presence of ambiguity, but as for puns we deliberately create ambiguity. That is because the essence of a pun lies in its ambiguity. For example,(24) What kind of money do girls like the most? Matrimonywe must admit that it is very difficult to translate the pun in this example into Chinese without losing its original flavor. However, it is a perfect example of puns in English. The ending element “mony” of the word “Matrimony” has the similar sound with that of the word “money”, which is considered as a homophonic pun. It is implied to us that girls expect to change their social and economic statuses through marriage. This pun is very humorous and ironic. Let’s look at another example,(25) King: …my cousin Hamlet, and my son… How is it that the clouds still hang on you? Hamlet: Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.[16] Shakespeare, HamletHere “sun” and “son” have the same sound but ambiguity, Hamlet used this ambiguity skillfully to hint his plaining emotion in the indirect way. The king pretended to be intimate with Hamlet and call him “son”, however, Hamlet responded that “I am too much in the sun”. The surface meaning is that he dries in the sun for a long time, but actually, it suggests that Hamlet couldn’t bear to be his uncle’s son any longer. Keep in mind that the central and basic phenomenon on which puns operates is ambiguity. A pun intentionally employs phonemic or semantic conditions to suggest one meaning on the surface while hiding another. We can find theoretical support for the ambiguity of puns. Li Xinhua maintains that language unit has both form and content, while there is not a onetoone relationship between form and content, that is to say, one phonemic form does not signify one meaning, and one meaning is not represented by one language form [17]. For example,(26) Try your sweet c