Abstract

Linguists of English pun of long-term studies suggest that, pun only in words or phrase this level. With the Chinese language puns comparative analysis, drawing on Chinese pun rhetoric application of the latest breakthroughs in research, that pun should also be a figure of speech, the embodiment is not limited to homonyms the same word different meaning or ambiguity of these means, other figures of speech such as metaphor, irony, symbol can also be used. According to the study proposed that the application of English pun from the morpheme, word, phrase extends to the sentence, sentence groups, discourse, and discourse. Great progress has been made in the study of equivoque, a Chinese figure of speech recently. Chinese linguists not only refine the definition of equivoque but also expand the range of it from word, phrase and sentence levels to morpheme, word, phrase, sentence, sentence group, paragraph and discourse levels. Based on those progressive views and current English puns study, a research is undertaken into the definition and range of English puns, and some new views are proposed, and the range of pun should be expanded to morpheme, word, phrase, sentence, sentence group, paragraph and discourse levels