Lexical ambiguity in headlines

 Lexical ambiguity in headlines

 

Bearing in mind all the information, given before, we are inclined to move to the practical part of this course paper. For the purposes of this paper we will identify and analyze lexical ambiguity in some its forms.  Following examples are taken from “The Sun” and “The Guardian” newspapers. Popular and broadsheet paper, as they are, employ a great variety of wordplay in their headlines. Thus, comparing two different newspapers in use of the wordplay would diversify our research.

 

The first wordplay under analysis read as follows:

 

1. Actress Kate Winslet says many sanks for her CBE (Thu, 14 Jun 2012, The Sun)

The subheadline gives us more precise information about the content of the article- “TITANIC star Kate Winslet is to be made a CBE — 100 years after the sinking of the ship that helped make her famous”. Having skimmed through the article it becomes obvious that the author tries to remind us about the Kate Winslet’s background, namely her starring in the film “Titanic”. As the film is about the liner, which was sunk by an iceberg, the author of the article skillfully makes use of wordplay in his headline.  The original wordplay is on the noun “sanks”, which indirectly refers back to and recalls the set expression “many thanks”. The phonemic similarities between “sanks” and “thanks” are exploited by substitution of the first latter “s” for the “th” in the noun “sanks”. Thus the set expression “many thanks” was supposed to be the primary meaning of the headline. It can be stated that the subtitler has succeeded in creating a pun that is similar in terms of the formal relation between the pun components, that is why we can observe here the case of paronimyc pun.

 

In the following example (2) we also deal with the paronimyc pun:

2. MPs spend £27k moaning about Commons loos

(Published: 01st June 2012, The Sun)

The subtitler has succeeded in creating a paronimyc pun by exploiting the phonemic similarity between two words, thus rendering the following meanings:

moaning - “a long, low sound made by a person expressing physical or mental suffering or sexual pleasure”

loaning - a thing that is borrowed, especially a sum of money that is expected to be paid back with interest).

Both words happen to be pronounced almost the same way. Only initial letters are different in these words.

Next example (3) shows one more case of phonological ambiguity, namely paronimyc pun. With the help of substitution of initial letters the word sweet is replaced by the word tweet to achieve the harmony with the context (the article is about twitter, that has helped to shift the balance of media power from press barons to the people).

3. Life is tweet, says John Prescott, as Twitter reaches 10m milestone in UK (Tuesday 15 May 2012 17.06 BST, The Guardian)

We can provide one more example of the wordplay with the word “tweet”  in order to prove the existence of so called ‘tried puns’:

4. “It’s tweet and sour” (Mon, 02 Jul 2012, The Sun)

The subtitle says following: “AXED The Voice teen duo Indie and Pixie have been besieged by death threats since they appeared on the show”. Here we observe the same case of patronymic pun, as it is in the previous example (3).

The verbal phrase be aware (“knowing about a situation or a fact”) in the following example (4) is replaced by the verb beware (“be cautious and alert to the dangers of”). As their pronunciation is similar, we can say that wordplay here is achieved by means of a play with the homophony of two morphologically different constructions.

 

5. For the coalition to survive, Tories and Lib Dems must beware their grassroots (Sunday 13 May 2012 22.00 BST, The Guardian)

In the example (5), the noun can be interpreted in more than one way. The polysemy of the noun halves , meaning both "a partner", and " either of two equal periods of time into which a sports game or a performance is divided".

 

6. Ukraine may discover Euro 2012 politics is a game of two halves (Thursday 14 June 2012 17.57 BST, The Guardian)

 

Following example (4) illustrates the polysemy of the noun austerity. In particular,

ambiguity is created between the two meanings of the noun "sternness or severity of manner or attitude" and " difficult economic conditions created by government measures to reduce public expenditure ".

 

7. Austerity has never worked (Monday 4 June 2012 22.14 BST, The Guardian)

 

8. Now is the perfect time for Liberal Democrats to wield the knife (Monday 4 June 2012 22.00 BST, The Guardian)

 

The subheadline clarifies the content: “Nick Clegg is finished. But if Vince Cable leads an anti-austerity rebellion, he can help save his party and the UK economy too”. The polysemy of the verb to wield, meaning both "hold and use a weapon or tool", and "have and be able to use power or influence" helps to create catchy headline to capture the largest possible number of readers.

 

Following headline is rather complicated for understanding if compared with those above. Not having read the article it is impossible to understand the headline. The article itself informs that “baking in Britain is becoming an act of self-sufficiency and social regeneration”. This information makes the headline clear and we can modify it in the following way: “The power of head: let us rule politics”. Now it corresponds to the article content. In this case we can observe homonymic puns.

 

9. The power of bread: let us eat politics (Monday 21 May 2012 15.30 BST, The Sun)

 

There is one more case of homonymic pun in the following headline:

10. Cameron grilled by MPs on eurozone crisis: Politics live blog (The Guardian, 3 Jul 2012)

The verb grill has two main meanings: 1) cook (food) using a grill and 2) to intense questioning or interrogation (informal). Such wordplay based on homonymy is intended by the author in order to attract the reader’s attention.

11. Help Britain do what it does best: make stuff (Sunday 20 May 2012 17.03 BST,

The Guardian)

The article under headline (9) says that UK needs an active industry policy. In the headline lexical ambiguity rely on the noun stuff, that has two strictly different interpretations: 1) things in which one is knowledgeable and experienced; one's area of expertise; 2) worthless or foolish ideas, speech, or writing; rubbish. The second, humorous meaning is selected in this case by the presence of the word best in the first part of the sentence. As a result, in the funny version of the headline, the best Britain do is to produce worthless or foolish ideas.  The wordplay here is based on homonymy.

 

12. Win or it's Czech mate for Poland (The Guardian)

 

The ‘checkmate’ homophone pun is fairly commonplace and has been documented in other media as well. It is interesting to know that the spelling of this trite pun is quite loose: the forms ‘Czech mate’, ‘Czechmate’ as well as the hyphenated ‘Czech-mate’ have all been attested. (“Czechmate as HP snubs job plea”- The Sun).  According to the process of lexicalization, these puns show a degree of institutionalization – they are so common and stereotypical that, though they are used specific wordplay to cover an immediate naming need, they can be considered to be already partially accepted by the speech community.

The headline above (10) tells us about Poland that “offered a glint of hope that they can be more than just Euro 2012”. For Poland the football match with Czech Republic will be decisive, that is what the subtitler wanted to emphasize.

 

Another instance of the situation when the spelling may yield one reading and the sound another occurs in example (11). In the spoken form, the headline may become aware as ambiguous, as it is based on the homophony of ‘Czech’ and ‘cheque’:

 

13. Faded Czechs not ready to expire (Saturday 19 June 2004 01.51 BST, The Guardian)

 

The written form ‘Czechs’ identifies the members of the Czech football team. But the rest of the headline does not ‘speak’ directly: it contains the expression ‘faded’, meaning tired or exhausted, and ‘to expire’ – a formal and dated expression meaning ‘to die’, used here in the metaphorical sense of ‘to leave the championship by being defeated’. If we draw our attention to the literal meaning of the headline (indicated by the spelling), we can observe that it does not communicate very directly. The fact that the headline uses a word in a metaphorical sense may, on the one hand, conceal the straightforward meaning but, on the other, it contributes to a greater ease in perceiving the wordplay. We thus face the seeming paradox that the literal reading

(‘Czechs continue undefeated’) is based on a metaphorical meaning of the verb ‘to expire’ while the punning reading is based on the literal meaning of the same verb, i.e. to lose validity.