Puns in Japanese advertisements

A serious approach on Japanese humour

Författare

Johan Gustafsson

Summary, in English

Everyone knows that English is big on puns. However, most speakers of Japanese know that this is very much true for this language as well. Being aware of the poor attention western linguists have given Japanese puns, this thesis is trying to present, describe and classify several examples of Japanese puns from a western humour-theoretic perspective. This is done by first explaining modern theories on humour while presenting and comparing puns from both English and Japanese as examples. This part will especially focus on script theories concerning humour. After reviewing some general information on the Japanese pun and its development, the scope is aimed towards puns contained in advertisements (especially on TV) on which a small analysing will be performed. Before the analysis of Japanese TV-advertisements some data and past research on puns inside advertisements is presented. When performing the analysis I try to apply the theories discussed, there among script theories which, to my knowledge, never have been performed on Japanese puns. In doing this it becomes clear that although in need of further development, these theories do indeed present some interesting features of the analysed pun.

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