英語修辭與寫作·15.3　Syllepsis

15.3　Syllepsis

15.3A　Syllepsis的含義和形式

1） Syllepsis的漢語名稱為“一語雙敘”，作為一種修辭格，它和Zeugma （軛式搭配） 同義，二詞均源于希臘語，前者的意思是putting together，后者的意思是yoking，仿佛是用軛把幾匹馬套在一起拉車，看似強拉硬套，實則協(xié)調(diào)前進，具有強大的合力，結構上通常是指一個詞語同時和并列結構的兩部分搭配，形式上都要符合英語使用習慣，但含義上一為直義 （Literal meaning），一為喻義（Figurative meaning）。例如：

She had to swallow bread and butter and a spasm of emotion.

句中“to swallow bread and butter” 搭配表示直義，而“to swallow a spasm of emotion”為喻義。

2） 一語雙敘除像上例那樣由一個謂語動詞和兩個作賓語d）搭配外，也可以是兩個主語共一個謂語動詞b），還可能是一個介詞帶兩個或更多的賓語a），或者一個修飾語修飾兩個名詞短語c）。例如：

a） He fought with desperation and a stout club.

b） Ten minutes later, the coffee and Commander Dana of Naval Intelligence arrived simultaneously.

（J. P. Bachman）

c） Miss Bolo rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan chair.

（Dickens）

d） Yesterday he had a blue heart and coat.

15.3B　Syllepsis的使用

1） 英諺Kill two birds with one stone.在一語雙敘法中得到了體現(xiàn)，顯得簡潔明快，試想若把一語雙敘改成一語一敘，就要多費筆墨；并且即使增加一些詞語，也難以道出一語雙敘的味道。

2） 一語雙敘的特色在于：直義和喻義的并行和交叉，往往給人某種“不協(xié)調(diào)感”，但稍加思索，就會感到格外幽默、俏皮，并由此產(chǎn)生出一種耐人尋味的邏輯力量，因此，不論在日常談笑和商業(yè)廣告及故事、小說中都經(jīng)常出現(xiàn)這種辭格。例如：

I got up yesterday and managed to catch a bus and a cold.

清早起床上路，趕上了公共汽車，卻著涼患了感冒。說得輕松幽默，頗有自我解嘲的味道。又如：

She looked at the faded photo with suspicion and a magnifying glass.

她帶著滿腹疑團看那張褪了顏色的照片，于是戴上了放大鏡。通過一語雙敘，把人物的心理和行動有機地聯(lián)系起來。

We sell clothes that fit the figures and the times.

衣服既合身，又合時，這樣的廣告確具吸引力。

She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears.

（O. Henry）

講出實話，動了真情，同時也流出眼淚，把心理反應和生理反應一語敘出，合情合理，令人回味無窮。

3） 一語雙敘中有時會出現(xiàn)某種不符合一般習慣的搭配。例如：

Lawsuit consumes time, and money, and rest, and friends. Children suck the mother when they are young, and the father when they are old.

這是兩句英語諺語，其中consume friends和suck the father不屬規(guī)范搭配，不好單獨使用，但在這兩個句子里不僅可以讓人接受，而且給人以新奇感，因為在語義上有內(nèi)在聯(lián)系，它所產(chǎn)生的語義優(yōu)勢超越了形式上的不協(xié)調(diào)，并形成一種得體的新穎表達方式，用中文表示則為：

訴訟使人喪失時間，金錢和安寧，也使人失去朋友。

小時吃娘奶，大了吃爹的。

練習十五?。‥xercise Fifteen）

I. Preview Questions:

1. What did Joel Sherzer say about Pun?

2. Can you cite an example of homonymic pun?

3. What have you learned about semantic pun?

4. What effects can a pun achieve when properly used?

5. What does the phrase “a dizzy speed” mean in the sentence “The car is running at a dizzy speed”?

6. Can you cite examples to indicate that some transferred epithets are pre-positioned and some are postpositioned?

7. How can you compare Transferred Epithet with Personification?

8. How is Syllepsis similar to Zeugma?

9. Cite an example of Syllepsis and analyse it.

II. Identify the pun in each of the following:

1. “We must all hang together, or we shall hang separately” is a famous pun by Benjamin Franklin.

2. After successfully delivering the first child of a Canadian couple visiting Scotland, the doctor popped into the waiting room to tell the anxious husband the good news. “It's a boy — eight pounds exactly!”

　“Oh,” replied the flustered father. “Will you take a check?”

3. A bus driver was filling out a report on a highway accident he had just had. When he came to the question “Disposition of passengers,” he wrote, “Mad as blazes.”

4. “Could I try on the trousers in the window?” asked the customer in the man's shop. “You can if you want, sir,” replied the salesman, “but we do have a dressing-room.”

5. What coat is finished without buttons and put on wet? — a riddle

6. After the flood had subsided, Noah asked all the animals in the ark to go forth and multiply. When all the other animals were gone, he saw two serpents remained in the ark.

“Why don't you go forth and multiply?” asked Noah, a bit angry.

“We can't,” said the serpent.“We are adders.”

III. Interpret the italic parts into proper Chinese:

1. Water flowed languidly into the thirsty fields.

2. Although young, she wrote a gem of a poem.

3. Not far from the brook stood a frowning rock.

4. IBM has a handsome increase of productivity this year.

5. He insisted that our assumptions were all wet.

6. The murderer has been put into the condemned cell.

7. In his devil of a hurry, he forgot to take down the address.

8. The Apple Company occasionally engages in electronic conversation with its users around the country.

IV. Point out the literal meaning and the figurative meaning in the syllepsis, and then try making your own sentences with syllepses:

1. Every time she went to a party, the woman put on ornaments and airs.

2. His temper was as short as his coattails.

3. Their talk continued on their three days' horseback journey, and finally they arrived at the town hall and an agreement.

4. He halted in the district where by night are found the lightest street, hearts, vows, and librettos.

5. She's too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise, and too little for a great praise.

6. Joanna, pursued by the three monks, ran about the room, leaping over tables and chairs, sometimes throwing a dish or a scriptural maxim at her pursuers.

V. Reading and discussion:

A pun is a word employed in two or more senses, or a word used in a context that makes the reader think of a second term resembling it in sound. In the first of the two following examples the pun depends upon different meanings of the same word; in the second, upon one word's sounding like another:

A cannon-ball took off his legs, so he laid down his arms.

（Thomas Hood）

During the two previous centuries musical styles went in one era and out of the other. ...

（Frank Muir）

While puns resemble one kind of irony in simultaneously using words in different senses, they differ in more important ways. For one thing, a pun is almost exclusively a device of humor. （At least it is so today. In earlier centuries poets and dramatists often employed puns in serious contexts.） Mark Twain, for instance, makes us laugh by punning on the expression “raising chickens”：

Even as a schoolboy poultry-raising was a study with me, and I may say without egotism that as early as the age of seventeen I was acquainted with all the best and speediest methods of raising chickens, from raising them off a roost by burning lucifer matches under their noses, down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty night by insinuating a warm board under their feet.

For another thing, puns, the better ones at any rate, work more like metaphors and similes. They reveal unexpected connections. A good pun not only amuses us, it surprises us by pointing out a significant and hitherto unseen similarity. The humorist S. J. Perelman entitles one collection of his essays The Road to Miltown, or Under the Spreading Atrophy. The pun on “atrophy” is effective not only because the word sounds like “a tree” and the phrase echoes a famous line of American poetry （“under the spreading chestnut tree”）, but also because in an age given to the wholesale swallowing of tranquilizers like Miltown, atrophy may indeed be spreading.

Because they have become a sign of “low humor，” many people think puns are unseemly in modern exposition. That judgment is a bit harsh: a good pun is often worth making. Use them only when you wish a light, informal tone, however. Even then a pun should be clever and revealing. A clumsy or inappropriate pun is worse than none at all.

Zeugma （pronounced ZOOG ma） is a special kind of pun involving a verb. It occurs when the same verb is used with two or more objects, either （1） applying to each of them in a different sense, or （2） even when having the same sense, creating an apparently incongruent combination of ideas.

In this example, the verb operates in slightly different senses:

Piano, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.

In another example the verb has the same meaning but combines with two objects to create an unusual coupling of ideas, is found in this sentence:

She left his apartment with tarnished virtue and a new mink.

Zeugma, like puns in general, is a comic figure of speech. At its best zeugma is witty and amusing, and it increases meaning by revealing hidden connections. Not only does Durrell's pairing of dishes and scriptural maxims amuse us: it also leads us to see their equal inefficacy in Joanna's plight.

（Thomas S. Kane）

Questions for discussion:

1. What are the usual ways to form puns?

2. In what way is a pun similar to Irony?

3. How is it that puns work more like metaphors and similes?

4. What should we bear in mind in the use of puns?

5. Why is Zeugma a special kind of Pun?

6. What effects can Zeugma achieve in communication?

參考答案

Ⅱ. 1. Note the two meanings expressed by “hang”: First one: To remain united and support each other; Second one: to be hanged/be put to death....

2. The “pounds” used by the doctor refers to the weight of the child, but the father mistook it for money.

3. The word “disposition” used in the report means how the passengers were settled after the accident, but the driver misunderstood it and thought it means how they felt and behaved after it.

4. The customer used the phrase “in the window” to modify “the trousers” while the salesman took it to be an adverbial phrase used to modify “try on”.

5. The coat here is used as “a coat of paint” （=a covering of paint spread over a surface）, not a kind of outer garment for a human being.

6. Both “multiply” and “adders” here have double meanings: What Noah wanted the animals to do was to breed, but the serpents, as they didn't like to obey the order, deliberately explained it in another meaning, which refers to one of the four fundamental operations of arithmetic （addition, subtraction, multiplication and division）; in the meantime, the cunning serpents made use of the fact that “adders” are that kind of serpents they belong to and, therefore, what they could do was only to add, not to multiply.

Ⅲ. 1. 水緩慢地流進那干涸的田地。

2. 盡管年紀輕輕，她已能寫出精彩的詩句。

3. 小溪不遠處立著一塊令人望而生畏的巖石。

4. 國際商業(yè)機器公司今年的生產(chǎn)率得到很大增長。

5. 他堅持認為我們的設想都站不住腳。

6. 該謀殺犯被打入死囚牢房。

7. 他情急之下竟忘了記下地址。

8. 蘋果公司有時和全國的用戶進行電子對話。

Ⅳ. 1. “Put on ornaments” is used in the literal meaning and “put on airs” in a figurative sense.

2. The word “short” is in its literal meaning when it is used to modify one's coattail；and it expresses a figurative meaning when used to modify one's temper as in “a short tempered fellow” — someone who is likely to get angry.

3.“To arrive at the town hall” is in a literal sense while “to arrive at an agreement” is in a figurative sense.

4. “Lighted streets” is in the literal sense, meaning “having light”, “bright”, whereas “light” in the other combinations,the word “light（est）” is used figuratively: untroubled, pleasant； not serious, unimportant； graceful, cheerful, etc.

5. This sentence is from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing , in which the words “low”, “brown” and “little” should all be taken figuratively. For instance, “too low” here does not mean “not tall enough” but means “not worthy （to be praised）”.

6. The Zeugma occurs with “throwing”, which is used in both a literal sense （with “dish”） and a metaphorical one（with “maxim”）.