POLYCODED PRECEDENT PHENOMENA AS A MEANS FOR CREATING SEMANTIC PUNS IN THE SPANISH MEDIA DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article explores mechanisms for creating a semantic puns based on transformed verbal and visual precedent phenomena in the Spanish-language media discourse, functioning as a polycode environment that combines linguistic units of several semiotic codes. Using various linguistic cognitive techniques, journalists implicitly ridicule politicians, their actions and decisions, analyze and criticize social phenomena, deliberately violating the language norm embedded in the recipient’s mind. On the basis of comparative, the work examines semantic and discursive analysis, mechanisms for generating semantic puns (verbal, visual and verbal-visual) in the Spanish-language media discourse. Semantic puns are created by the lexical-semantic and visual transformations of precedent phenomena through the replacement or addition of lexical or/and iconic components, the homonymic play of words and by means of derivation mechanisms – combining precedent names to form the neologisms needed to name previously non-existent phenomena in the Spanish language linguistics.