‘Extended’ Wordplay in Fictional Narrative Texts: Cross-Disciplinary Perspective

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Series: Humanities & Social Sciences. 2025. Vol. 18. No. 1. P. 106–118.

Marina R. Safina, Alisia S. Kosheleva

The article considers instances of complex use of wordplay as a narrative-building tool in fictional narrative texts. The term ‘extended wordplay’ is introduced specifically to refer to the cases where repetitive use of (or reference to) a specific wordplay or a specific wordplay-building model in a fictional context can be seen as a means to convey an effect or a message that are important for the construction of the fictional narrative. Assuming the linguistics, literary studies and pragmatics perspectives, the study carries out a comprehensive multidisciplinary analysis of wordplay in both English literary and cinematic fictional texts and reveals that extended wordplay can fulfil plot-building, world-building and character portrayal functions. The findings also show that specific elements of extended wordplay such as its formal type, or word-building model, the semantics or formal peculiarities of its constituent parts, its overall semantics and effect can originate in a very restrictive context and prove crucial for the construction or perception of the fictional narrative. The collected data and findings can be helpful for further research of complex cases of wordplay in multimodal texts or the perception of wordplay and English-Russian wordplay translation by the audiences.

Keywords: художественный мир, игра слов, ambiguity, двусмысленность, fictional narrative, wordplay, fictional world, narrative functions of wordplay, multidisciplinary approach to wordplay, pragmatics of wordplay, художественный нарратив, функции игры слов, мультидисциплинарный подход к изучению игры слов, прагматический аспект игры слов