A linguistic study of paronomasia (al-Jinas)‎ in Arabic and English

Abstract EN

Paronomasia is a recognized rhetorical device by which poets could play with words that are similar or identical in form but different in meaning.

The present study aims to identify paronomasia in Arabic and English.

To achieve the aim of the study, a corpus of selected verses chosen from two famous figures in Arabic and English literatures and analyzed thoroughly.

The analysis of data under investigation reveals that paronomasia is a crucial aid used by poets to portrait the real world as imaginative.

It further shows that the concept of paronomasia in English is not the same as in Arabic.

In English, there are echoes of the Arabic jinās, i.e., there are counterpart usages of similar devices, yet English rhetoricians have not defined or classified them as exhaustively as Arab rhetoricians have done.

English counterparts to jinās are scattered among four English devices, viz., pun, paronomasia, homophone and homonym.

Each of these terms is completely autonomous and independent of the others, yet they overlap in one way or another.

Arab rhetoricians do not share the same view about paronomasia, it is a lexical relation when the words have the same sound or nearly but different meanings.