Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills. (M. Antrim)

Personification is often effected by direct address to an inanimate object or an abstract idea, e.g. Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art (E.A. Poe).

Personification may be used:

· as an image-creating device;

· to characterise or describe objects or people;

· to impart some expressive or emotive force to the utterance.

Polysyndeton is deliberate repetition of connectives before each component part, when it is generally not expected. e.g. Noah and his wife had dark hair and brown eyes; so did Ham and his wife; so, for that matter, did Shem and Varadi, and the one beginning with J, and all children of Shem and Varadi and the one beginning with J. (J. Barnes).

Conjunctions may connect separate words, parts of a sentence (phrases), clauses, simple and complex sentences and even more prolonged segments of text.

Polysyndeton serves:

• to introduce strong dynamic effect, e.g. We lived and laughed and loved and left (J. Joyce);
• to strengthen the idea of equal logical (emotive) importance of connected component parts, e.g. ‘Oh, everybody in the barn cellar. Wilbur and the sheep and the lambs and the goose and the gander and the goslings and Charlotte and me” (E.B. White);

· to emphasize the simultaneity of actions, or close connection of properties enumerated, e.g. They (men and women) come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish;

· to add an air of solemnity to a passage.The elevated tonality of polysyndeton may be explained by associations with the style of the Bible, in which nearly every sentence or at least almost every paragraph begins with “ and ”, e.g. “And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake” (Rev., 8:5).

Pun is a play of words based on polysemy or homonymy. In other words, pun is based on the interaction of two well-known meanings of a word or the interplay of word or word combination that sound the same.

e.g. Her real name is Marples. I call her Marbles for a joke. If she ever moves or retires, I’ll be able to say I’ve lost my Marbles. (D. Lodge)

“I have this fabulous idea for a kind of English Twin Peaks”. “What is it?’ I said, averting my eyes from her own twin peaks”. (D. Lodge)

Contextual conditions resulting in the formation of pun may vary:

a) intentional misinterpretation of a word by the same speaker, e.g. Victoria’s father was a group-captain in the RAF and has retired to live in Grasse. “Out to Grasse” Victoria calls it. This is a pun on “ out to grass ” – the phrase used to describe retired horses who are allowed to graze in the fields in their old age.

b) pretended jocular misunderstanding, e.g. Are you getting fit or having one? (from the television program M*A*S*H*). - the word “ fit ” is used in two different meanings “physically toned” and “ neurological crisis ”.

c) intentional treating idioms as if they were word combinations (or single words) used in their primary sense:

e.g. Cannibal Cook: Shall I stew both those cooks we captured from the steamer?

Cannibal King: No, one is enough. Too many cooks spoil the broth.

d) misinterpretation caused by the phonetic similarity of two words, e.g. he’ll – heel, we’d – weed.

There are different kinds of pun:

a) homographic where the pun exploits multiple meanings of essentially the same word, e.g. “I am not the only one who is late here”, says the ghost. “ Late ” means both “ arriving after expected time ” and “ dead ”.

b) ideophonic, where the words of similar but not identical sound are confused, e.g. responsibility – response-ability.

c) homophonic, in which the words are pronounced identically but are of distinct and separate origin, e.g. I’ve no idea how worms reproduce but you often find them in pairs (pears).

Puns can be simple (like given above) and compound, e.g. “Three brothers asked their mother to think of a name for their cattle-ranch. She suggested Focus Ranch, explaining that Focus means where the sun’s rays meet” (Sons raise meat).

Pun may be used in every type of emotional speech (poetry, imaginative, prose, colloquial speech). In previous epochs this stylistic device was used for serious rhetorical effect, e.g. in the Bible. “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.” The name “ Peter ” is derived from “ Petros ” and means “ rock, stone ”.

In modern poetry and prose pun is employed with a humorous aim. It is widely used in riddles and jokes, e.g. When did the blind man see? When he picked up his hammer and saw.

Some famous abbreviations are also puns, e.g. 2 much – too much, K-9 (police dog) – canine, 4u- for you.

Pun is used:

· to produce humorous effect;

· to make the two meanings more conspicuous or set a contrast between them.

Repetition is recurrence of the same element (word or phrase) within the sentence.

e.g. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up…

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