What is pun rhetoric?

Pun is a common rhetorical device. In a certain language environment, sentences are associated with two things at the same time by means of phonetic or semantic connection. This rhetorical way of saying one thing and doing another is called pun.

Shi Zhongli was the foreign minister of the Song Dynasty. He and some friends went to the Royal Garden to see lions. One of them sighed: "This lion is fed meat by the court every day. We are not as good as lions as officials! " Shi Zhongli said, "Of course, our official title is Yuan Wailang. How can it compare with the lion in the imperial garden?

"Yuan Wailang" is homophonic with "Wolf outside the garden", which refers to both Yuan Wailang and the wolf outside the garden. In contrast to the lion in the garden, it is humorous, playful and interesting.

This kind of pun is called homophonic pun, which uses the homophonic relationship (homophonic or similar) of words.

After the monkey died, he went to see the king of hell and asked for an afterlife.

The prince said, "If you want to be a man, you must remove all your hair." Call the child and pull out his hair. Just dial one, and the monkey will scream with pain. The prince said, "Look at you, you are penniless. How can you be a man?"

This joke, under the guise of fable, satirizes extremely stingy and selfish people, pulls a gross profit and does nothing. At the end, a sharp question "How can I be a man?"

The literal meaning of "nothing" is unwilling to pull out a hair, and the extended meaning is to describe being extremely stingy and selfish. This joke has two meanings: on the surface, under the pretext of Rebecca scolding the monkey, he refused to pull out a hair; Actually, it is used to satirize extremely stingy and selfish people.

This kind of pun formed by the polysemy of words is called semantic pun.

Baoyu added, "Don't be warm. I only like cold food. " Aunt Xue said, "This can't be done; The writer ate cold wine and trembled all over. " Baochai said with a smile, "Brother Bao, thanks to your daily chores, don't you know that wine is the hottest? Eat while it is hot and spread quickly; If you eat it cold, it will condense in it. Warming him with five internal organs won't hurt? Nothing has changed since then. Stop eating that cold food. " Baoyu put down the cold one and drank it while it was hot.

Daiyu ate melon seeds and just sipped her mouth and smiled. It happened that Xueyan, Daiyu's maid, came to give birth to a small stove for Daiyu. Daiyu said with a smile, "Who told you to send it? Don't disturb him. -I'm freezing there! " Xueyan sent: "Sister Zijuan asked me to send it because I was afraid that the girl would be cold." Daiyu took it, held it in her arms and said with a smile, "It's a pity that you listened to her! What I tell you on weekdays goes in one ear and out the other. How can you listen to him faster than the imperial edict? Baoyu heard this; I knew Daiyu was mocking me, but I didn't reply. I just laughed for a while. (The eighth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions)

A passage that Daiyu said to Xueyan, "you" refers to Xueyan on the surface, but actually refers to Baoyu; On the surface, "he" refers to Zijuan, but in fact it refers to Baochai, which is a pun. However, it is different from the homophonic pun and semantic pun mentioned above, but uses the different relations between characters in a special language environment to point at the bald man and scold the blind. This kind of swearing pun can be called an innuendo pun.

It is said that Jin Shengtan, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, gave his son a couplet before his death: lotus seeds are bitter in the heart and pears are sour in the stomach. Literally, "lotus seeds" and "pears" refer to two kinds of fruits. Jin Shengtan's two sons are called "lotus seeds" and "pears". Lotus seed is homophonic with Reiko Kobayakawa, and pear is homophonic with Li Er. I wrote this pair of couplets at the time of execution, pinning my son's sad mood. This is a pun involving three aspects.

Pun is a traditional rhetorical device in Chinese. Proper use of puns and going your own way have a wonderful effect of killing two birds with one stone. Sometimes humorous and interesting; Sometimes euphemism is subtle and intriguing.