Homophones as Hyperlinks
09 April 2014
When Tim Berners-Lee invented hypertext markup language he turned two dimensional data into three dimensional data. The hyperlinks with which we are now so familiar on the World Wide Web are rather like tunnels down which we can burrow to pop up anywhere in the informational universe. The astrophysics equivalent are worm holes which theoretically allow rapid transport to any part of the universe. The Harry Potter equivalent is a portkey which allows something similar in the JK Rowling universe.
In a modest unassuming way homophones do the same job. Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings. They may or may not be spelt the same way. Pane and pain are homophones. Rose (Flower) and Rose (went up) are also homophones.
Homophones are the basis of the lowest for of wit, puns. Perhaps puns don’t get all the credit they deserve. Suppose that you look on puns as a kind of verbal hyperlink. They can be used to transport the mildly surprised listener to another place. Don’t forget that surprise is one of the ingredients of humour. The English language is fertile ground for puns and therefore for verbal hyperlinks and therefore for humour.
The words used don’t have to be exact homophones. For example being hit by an egg is no yoking matter. All right, this is a particularly bad pun but it illustrates the point and would perhaps mean that you would have to shell out on a new suit. What has happened here? The listener who is focused on egg-related matters has been transported quickly to a distorted version of a cliché.
To continue the theme, the punner might have to make their escape in a hatchback and so it is that the attention is switched from eggs to cars, although since cars need fuel, the attention could refocus on ‘Shell’.
So we have moved from avine reproduction to methods of transport to FTSE 100 companies and back. A pun can take you anywhere and it has a low carbon footprint.
A little latitude is allowed in pronunciation: A dry sense of humour should never desert you. If you are so inclined, you could be transported from a smile to a place where it hardly ever rains. A twelve inch ruler would make a very small king (or queen, come to that). These may not be particularly funny but they do shift the focus, enlarge the conversation and there is an element of surprise.
A pun is a tunnel that gives three dimensions to language and, who knows, maybe there are more dimensions to be discovered and used. Surely time is one, or is the hourglass just a waist of time?
I have done my best to raise the status of the pun and I believe that although in the beginning was the word, the pun came soon after for those who thought the word alone was not quite enough. Why be linear when you can bifurcate?
And another thing - why hasn’t Tim Berners-Lee got a Nobel prize?
By Papillon