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<h3 style="margin-top:0;"><a style="font-weight: 500; font-size: 21px;line-height: 30px; margin-top:25px; margin-bottom: 10px;" href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc/2014/12/01/pun-control/" target="_blank">pun control</a></h3>
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<p>From: Marjorie Chan <chan.9@osu.edu><br />
Source: The Guardian (11/28/14)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/28/china-media-watchdog-bans-wordplay-puns">China bans wordplay in attempt at pun control</a><br />
Officials say casual alteration of idioms risks nothing less than ‘cultural and linguistic chaos’, despite their common usage</p>
<p>By <a itemprop="url name" href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/taniabranigan" rel="author" data-link-name="auto tag link">Tania Branigan</a> in Beijing</p>
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<p><time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2014-11-28T07:26:18-0500" data-timestamp="1417177578000"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">From online discussions to adverts, Chinese culture is full of puns. But the country’s print and broadcast watchdog has ruled that there is nothing funny about them.</span></time></p>
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<p>It has banned wordplay on the grounds that it breaches the law on standard spoken and written Chinese, makes promoting cultural heritage harder and may mislead the public – especially children.</p>
<p>The casual alteration of idioms risks nothing less than “cultural and linguistic chaos”, it warns.</p>
<p>Chinese is perfectly suited to puns because it has so many homophones. Popular sayings and even customs, as well as jokes, rely on wordplay.</p>
<p>But the order from the State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television says: “Radio and television authorities at all levels must tighten up their regulations and crack down on the irregular and inaccurate use of the Chinese language, especially the misuse of idioms.”</p>
<p>Programmes and adverts should strictly comply with the standard spelling and use of characters, words, phrases and idioms – and avoid changing the characters, phrasing and meanings, the order said.</p>
<p>“Idioms are one of the great features of the Chinese language and contain profound cultural heritage and historical resources and great aesthetic, ideological and moral values,” it added.</p>
<p>“That’s the most ridiculous part of this: [wordplay] is so much part and parcel of Chinese heritage,” said David Moser, academic director for CET Chinese studies at Beijing Capital Normal University.</p>
<p>When couples marry, people will give them dates and peanuts – a reference to the wish<em>Zaosheng guizi</em> or “May you soon give birth to a son”. The word for dates is also <em>zao</em> and peanuts are <em>huasheng</em>.</p>
<p>The notice cites complaints from viewers, but the examples it gives appear utterly innocuous. In a tourism promotion campaign, tweaking the characters used in the phrase <em>jin shan jin mei</em> – perfection – has turned it into a slogan translated as “Shanxi, a land of splendours”. In another case, replacing a single character in <em>ke bu rong huan</em>has turned “brook no delay” into “coughing must not linger” for a medicine advert.</p>
<p>“It could just be a small group of people, or even one person, who are conservative, humourless, priggish and arbitrarily purist, so that everyone has to fall in line,” said Moser.</p>
<p>“But I wonder if this is not a preemptive move, an excuse to crack down for supposed ‘linguistic purity reasons’ on the cute language people use to crack jokes about the leadership or policies. It sounds too convenient.”</p>
<p>Internet users have been particularly inventive in finding alternative ways to discuss subjects or people whose names have been blocked by censors.</p>
<p>Moves to block such creativity have a long history too. Moser said Yuan Shikai, president of the Republic of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/china" data-link-name="auto-linked-tag" data-component="auto-linked-tag">China</a> from 1912 to 1915, reportedly wanted to rename the Lantern Festival,<em> Yuan Xiao Jie</em>, because it sounded like “cancel Yuan day”.</p>
<p>• <em>Additional research by Luna Lin</em></p>
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by <a href="mailto:denton.2@osu.edu">denton.2@osu.edu</a> on December 1, 2014 </div>
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