Text analysis of puns in Persian and English advertising discourse

This article analyses a corpus of 700 English and 560 Persian magazine advertisements from 2009 to 2011 in order to define the most prevalent type of puns used in both Persian and English magazine advertisements. Persian and English puns containing advertisements are analyzed based on the taxonomy proposed by McQuarrie and Mick (1996). The result of this study suggests that American advertisers use puns more than Persians in their work. Besides, Persian and English advertisers use different types of puns.Furthermore, the use of puns increased in both Persian and English magazine advertisements since 2009. This increase manifests this fact that recent advertisements are more attention attractors than advertisements before 2009. Nevertheless, there was a decrease in using puns in Persian magazine advertisements in 2011. The reason for this decrease in puns containing advertisements in 2011 Persian magazines can be the preference of Persian companies to advertise on TV. In general, it can be concluded that English and Persian magazine advertisers are completely independent from each other in using puns.

کلیدواژه ها:

pun ، magazine advertisements ، print advertisements