The Poetics of Qur ānic Punning

In this article, Rippin examines the punning system in the Qur’ān. First, he states some generalities about punning. He believes that puns stand as a bridge between rhyme and metaphor and are formed by the blending of sound and meaning. Then, he raises the following two questions: Do the puns help to create efficient Qur’ānic discourse? What do puns convey to the reader? Then, he tries to answer these two questions by examining several examples of Qur’ānic puns. Altogether, Rippin concludes that the pun in the Qur’ān depends to a great extent on the readers’ reading (qarā’at) of the Qur’ānic text. The application of vocabulary is a part of the conveyed meaning and thus the Qur’ānic message is doubly highlighted by means of the applied vocabulary. There is no doubt that this issue involves the fact that words convey meanings only through context.