Abstract
The experimental nature of art, suggested by the aesthetics of postmodernism, naturally encourages the practice of language play. The language play in the 21st century penetrates into all spheres of linguistic activity of the individual and becomes a language disease. The article studies the language play in the fiction of Andrey Astvatsaturov, a prominent representative of Russian postmodernism. The purpose of the study is to characterize the ways of expressing a pun implied in the writer's prose. The analysis carried out in the course of the study shows that the pun intended in the writer's prose is presented in ways codified in the language usage. The author's idiostyle is characterized by playing with different meanings, consonance at the phonetic level and playing with paronyms. Such manipulations in A. Astvatsatourov prose act as bright means of a language play and are distinguished by their multifunctionality. Certain conclusions about the productivity of this element of the language play in the work of a modern author are made. Linguocreative reproduction of lexemes familiar to the recipient is based on associative perception of the meanings of words. Referring to the lexical structural level of the language, puns are closely related to the phonetic, graphic, syntactic levels.
Keywords
Pun, lexical level, language play, postmodernism, polysemy, paronyms, comic.