In a typical pun, a word (or phrase) that you would expect to be there is replaced by one which is not really correct but which has a topical relation to what is being talked about. For example, suppose someone wants to buy a painting, but they don't have enough money. This person might say, "Oh, dear. I don't have enough Monet." That is a pun. The word money is what we expect. The word Monet isn't, but it resembles money in sound and it relates to the topic of 'paintings'. Usually (always?), in order to interpret a pun we need not just linguistic knowledge but cultural/general knowledge too-e.g., Monet was a painter.

Puns can be divided into phonetical (that are built with a help of consonance or homonymy), and lexical (that are built with a help of polysemy, synonymy, antonymy).

Puns are plays on words, and they form the basis of most jokes. They can use a word that has two meanings as in the following When is an ambulance not an ambulance? - When it turns into a hospital! Here turns into can mean changes into or turns a corner into. Or they can play on two different words with the same sound, as in What’s black and white and red (read) all over? - A newspaper. (Obviously this second kind of pun doesn’t work when written down.)

More examples:

What wobbles when it flies? - A jelicopter! (i.e. jelly wobbles and a helicopter flies)

Why couldn’t the viper viper face? - Because the adder adder handkerchief.

(Why couldn't the viper wipe her face? - Because the adder had her handkerchief. Both viper and adder are synonyms for the only poisonous snake found in England.)

Why are there no aspirin tablets in the jungle? - Because paracetamol! (i.e. because parrots eat them all; paracetamol is the brand name for a popular aspirin tablet in England.)

Popular British tabloids such as the Sun or the Mirror are notorious for the use of puns in their headlines, but even serious papers such as the Guardian cannot resist the temptation. What makes many of the headline puns even more difficult than the simple wordplay puns used in jokes is that headline puns very often contain cultural references. Unless you are familiar with popular British TV programmes or advertising, the headline will be impossible to understand.

That is why the pragmatic (attractive) function of the headline is very important and very often achieved with a help of pun. Let’s look through the examples which were taken from “The Guardian” over two weeks at the end of November last year:

On a whinge and a prayer (On the resignation of a minister of the British government)

The pun is in the combination of whinge and prayer. This refers to the title of an American World War II song called Coming in on a wing and a prayer, about a pilot trying to land a damaged plane. Wing has been changed here to whinge, which means to moan or complain. The term "without a prayer" means "without hope".

The literal meaning of the headline is that the minister was complaining (about his treatment at the hands of the press) but had no hope of retaining his position as a leader of the Welsh assembly.

Officials say atoll do nicely (About the fraudulent sale of small Pacific islands)

The word atoll means coral island and is being punned here with the phrase "that will do" thus producing the sentence: Officials say that will do nicely. The statement That will do nicely is taken from a British TV advertisement some years ago where a customer asks if he can pay by a certain credit card and the shop assistant replies. Yes, that will do nicely. (i.e. you are most welcome to pay with this credit card.) The corrupt officials of the headline were telling prospective island buyers that their money was most welcome. The pragmatic effect of the usage of the pun here is in the achievement of certain irony. The author claims corrupted officials and appeals them to stop.

Why the Clyde offer is not so bonny (About a take-over offer by a Scottish engineering company)

The pun here is in the combination of Clyde and bonny. This refers to a popular gangster film of about twenty years ago called Bonnie and Clyde. Bonny is a word used mostly in Scotland to mean attractive, so the literal meaning of the headline is that the take-over offer of the Clyde company is not attractive to shareholders of the other company.

No flies on this heart-stopper (A review of the play The Lord of the Flies) The flies of the headline refer to the name of the play under review The Lord of the Flies. The pun is in the reference to the expression There’s no flies on her, (or anyone other person), which means you cannot trick her; she is not easily fooled. The headline is presumably intended to mean: This show is very good. The pragmatic effect here is a very positive mark of the author as to the play.

Taxing returns [44]

(Around 98% of accountants surveyed by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants had problems with their self-assessment tax returns because of Inland Revenue systems errors)

Here, given that the topic is taxes, the phrase we might expect is tax returns (i.e., those forms you have to fill in each year about the money you earned and so on). But there is also a word taxing, which means 'arduous, tiring'. The article tells us that there were errors in the tax returns. The headline tells us that all this errors must have been taxing/tiring for someone (i.e., the people who had to deal with the errors). The author appeals that all the mistakes should be corrected and such things shouldn’t happen again.

In conclusion we may say that the usage of the pun in newspaper headline is connected with a pragmatic function of the headline because of the fact that actualization of the pun is realized in adaptation of lexical means and syntactic structures to the certain communicative aim of the phrase and in individual author’s usage of this device.