The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack

Author:John Pollack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

TO GROAN, OR NOT TO GROAN

No exploration of the tumultuous relationship between puns and humor would be complete without taking a closer look at the ritual groan that many people, on hearing a pun, feel compelled to utter. Those who tend to groan or otherwise protest every pun will often argue that their response is a universal and appropriate reflex to a particularly “low” form of humor. This is a cultural myth on both counts.

As the lexicographer Henry Fowler noted in his classic Modern English Usage, “The assumption that puns are per se contemptible, betrayed by the habit of describing every pun not as ‘a pun’ but as ‘a bad pun’ or ‘a feeble pun,’ is a sign at once of sheepish docility and a desire to seem superior. Puns are good, bad, and indifferent, and only those who lack the wit to make them are unaware of the fact.”

Fowler, who wrote that in 1926, was absolutely correct. And if you pay close attention to how people actually respond to puns in daily life, you’ll notice that, depending on the context, puns elicit a wide range of responses—most of them positive.

First, consider the puns that permeate rap. The rapper André 3000, of OutKast, explained his decision to get married with the following verse: “So, I typed a text to a girl I used to see / sayin’ that I chose this cutie pie with whom I wanna be / and I apologize if this message gets you down / Then I CC’d every girl that I’d see-see ’round town.” To millions of fans, such punning sparks neither laughter nor groans, just more sales.

Like their rap counterparts, country music fans don’t tend to groan at puns, either. If they did, why would Nashville songwriters employ them so often in the genre’s lyrics and titles? Consider Mel Street, who laments lost love in “Looking Out My Window Through the Pain.” Similarly, the Statler Brothers sang about a man on a double date at a drive-in movie who goes to buy popcorn and returns to find his buddy in the backseat, enjoying the pleasures of both women at once. The song’s title? “You Can’t Have Your Kate and Edith Too.”

More subtle is Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” When he played to the convicted felons at California’s Folsom State Prison in 1968, his lyrics referenced the blues in more ways than one—not just the inmates’ incarceration, but their mandatory blue uniforms, too.

Puns also fare well on Broadway. Year after year in midtown Manhattan, large audiences pay top dollar for clever wordplay, especially in musical theater. In shows from Gershwin to Sondheim, puns have long played a critical if understudied role, and help earn rave reviews. Even the oldest, most familiar puns still draw legions of fans, as thousands wait hours in line for free tickets to see Shakespeare in the Park, groaning only when the tickets run out.

Yet another audience that doesn’t groan at puns is children, many of whom delight in knock-knock jokes and punning riddles.

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