And in case someone wants to think more seriously of puns, here's a bit from
Stewart's _Nonsense_ which might or might not make sense, haha:
The Terrible Pun
Puns are "terrible" and "awful" because they split the flow of events in time. Like
any intrusion of nonsense into conversation, they are a 'trip-up', an impediment
to seriousness. This is emphasized by the point that a pun is only terrible if
members frame it as a pun, if it is foregrounded and brought to attention.
Harvey Sacks has illustrated the extraordinary frequency of puns in 'ordinary'
discourse, writing 'Puns are recognizable, though not always recognized." Hence
the importance of distinguishing between 'pun intended' and 'no pun intended'.
When puns go unattended and are unintended, they serve as short cuts, they fit
into the prevailing mode of discourse. When they are intended and attended to,
they move the discourse to another plane, interrupting the purpose at hand by
introducing a universe that 'does not count,' that does not go or get anywhere...
Much of children's traditional speech play uses the simultaneity of the pun.
These forms of speech play often work within the hierarchy of one logical type,
systematically exploring the differences between the meanings of a word. In
these two verses, for example, the categories "vegetable names" and "state
names" are worked into narratives that divide at every step into a double that is
the pun:
Do you carrot all for me?
My heart beets for you.
With your turnip nose
And your radish face
You are a peach.
If we cantaloupe
Lettuce marry
Weed make a swell pear.
Mississippi said to Missouri
If I put on my New Jersey
What will Delaware?
Virginia said, Alaska.
or more seriously...
in this passage from Ulysses: 'The fashionable international world attended en
masse this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan,
grand high chief ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of
Pine Valley, Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs. Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs. Poll Ash, Mrs.
Holly Hazel eyes, Miss Daphne Bays." When a narrative tolerates extensive
punning, when it is saturated with puns, the effect is a text that splits itself into
simultaneous texts with every step.
best,
Rebecca
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