STYLISTICS AND

VERBAL HUMOUR
H A N N I S A M AWA D D A H Y U S U F ( 1 9 0 1 9 0 9 0 )
D H I YA R A H M A D A N I Y U S R I Z A L ( 1 9 0 1 9 0 7 9
P U N S AN D V E R B A L P L AY
• a pun is a form of word-play in which
some feature of linguistic structure
simultaneously combines two unrelated
meanings. The pun is an important part of
the stylistic arsenal of writers because it
allows a controlled ‘double meaning’ to be
located in what is in effect a chance
connection between two elements of
language.
PAR O D Y A N D S AT I R E
• Parody and satire are forms of verbal humour
which draw on a particular kind of ironyforthe
design oftheirstylistic incongruity. A particularly
important way of producing irony is to echo
other utterances and forms of discourse. This is
apparent in an exchange like the following:
• A: I’m really fed up with this washing up.
• B: You’re fed up!Who do you think’s been
doing it all week?
In this exchange, the proposition about being fed
up is used in a ‘straight’ way by the first speaker,
but in an ironic way by the second.
 ALLUSION AND PARODY
• Allusion is some fact of shared experience, some circumstance implicit in the common culture,
to which participants in a conversation may confidently allude. As we know allusion is
something more explicit and overt, something for which the word ‘citation’ might be a more
accurate name.
• The allusion is impudently funny, and at the same time makes a criticism that might have been
more woundingly phrased. allusion can be an important, indeed cardinal, device in the structure
of comic texts. Furthermore, wherever allusions occur some excursion into parody is possible;
the parodic line often begins with the allusive point. The parody aims affectionately at the
comprehension of certain stylistic mannerisms, and it is the parodist who is at risk here, should
the purport of his mimetic tricks go unrecognised
• correspondences were not consciously sought when the parody was made, memory has indeed
been at its sneaking craft, as a few examples may show:
Hopkins: ‘How to keep – is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch . . .’ (‘The
Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo’)
Parody: ‘Ah, waiter, are there any, any, where are, tell me, come, Napkins . . .’
Hopkins: ‘. . . to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye’ (‘The Candle Indoors’)
Parody: ‘This train’s tripping and track-truckling . . .’

A test of good parody is not how closely it imitates or reproduces certain turns of phrase, but how well
it generates a style convincingly like that of the parodied author, producing the sort of phrases and
sentences he might have produced.
 ISSUES TO CONSIDER
in a sense, you cannot write a parody without first of all undertaking some kind of stylistic
analysis, no matter how intuitive or informal that analysis may be.
Some suggestions follow:
❑ David Lodge’s novel Thinks (2002) makes for an interesting study in style, not least because of the
multiplicity ofstylesits author employs. Many of these styles are direct parodies of other writers’ work.
Worth following up in view of the material covered both in C2 and D5 of this book, is a parody which
involves a treatise on the subject of bats written in the style of Irvine Welsh.
❑ The following excerpt is from a parody by Woody Allen. Set in the Europe of the 1920s, a fictional
persona imagines a series of encounters with the distinguished literati of that period. This sequence
covers his meeting with Ernest Hemingway:
THANK YOU!