词汇学同音异义词在日常生活中的应用

Homonymy and homophonic pun in daily life Homonymy is an important part of the study of linguistics and lexicology. It was originated from the Greek word homonumos which means the relation between two words that are spelled the same way but differ in meaning or the relation between two words that are pronounced the same way but differ in meaning. English homonyms are classified as three types, perfect homonyms, homophones and homographs. Perfect homonyms are those words identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning, such as lie (make a statement that one knows to be untrue) and lie (be, put oneself flat on a horizontal surface or in a resting position). Homophones are words identical in sound but different in spelling and meaning, such as air and heir, bear and bare, dear and deer, etc. homographs are words identical in spelling but different in sound and meaning, for example, lead (/ l i:d /, verb, guide

or take, esp. by going in front, etc.) and lead (/ led /, noun, easily melted metal of a dull bluish-grey color), tear (/ tiə /, noun, drop of salty water coming from the eye) and tear (/ tεə /, verb, pull sharply apart or to pieces).

Under the influence of homonyms, pun is appeared. It uses the condition of words that are pronounced the same or almost the same to make word or sentence semantic pun. Looking at the same issue from different perspectives, we may often come up with different definitions of the thing under discussion. And, not surprisingly, pun can be thus defined in many ways. There is such a humorous explanation about pun:”punning-to torture one poor word ten thousand ways (John Dryden)”. In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, pun is defined as “An amusing use of a word or phrase that has two meanings, or words with the same sound but different meanings”. According to The Oxford English Dictionary, pun is defined as “the use of 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”. In Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, pun is defined as “a figure of speech depending upon a similarity of sound and a disparity of meaning”.

There are a large number of synonyms in English, not to mention those words with almost the same pronunciation. This phenomenon provides a good condition for homophonic pun’s appearance. Homophonic pun in advertising is differing from the general sense of homophonic pun. It is through add meaning which related to the product in the homonym on the basis of the original semantic, in other words, make the new meaning of relevant products and original meaning of the words mix together and complement each other, increase the other meaning, reduce the distance between products and consumers to achieve the purpose of sales promotion. Through this way, advertising designers use some statements skillfully that consumers familiar with to make consumers engrave those products on their memories which they are not familiar with or even do not know before. At