Parody and Garden Path: A case study of Chinese rhetorical constructions from the perspective of lexico-constructional pragmatics

This is a study of Chinese rhetorical constructions, parody and garden path (GP), from the perspective of lexico-constructional pragmatics (LCP). LCP adopts a holographic view of lexicon and construction so that they can be analyzed alike. We take parody and GP examples from Chinese advertisements for analysis. The LCP analysis highlights the pragmaticity and rhetoricality of each case: for a particular effect. When difficulty arises, pragmatic means may be used to “pragma-coerce” the right, clever, or erroneous use of a rhetorical construction for delivery of a retrievable intended effect, an Aha-effect. We conduct a mini-questionnaire with two cases, the former dealing with parody and the latter with GP. The study indicates the humor competence of ordinary Chinese participants (around the level of BA) as far as parody and GP are concerned and the participants’ potential for cognition of the pragma-rhetorical values of parody and GP or their potential for generation of such utterances. It is suggested that rhetorical constructions outwit the less rhetorical or grammatical constructions iff they are available and accessible, and that LCP can offer us a feasible interpretation of such tropes as parody and GP.