ce is found in the pair of words: sits and lips. The repetition of identical vowel sound /i/ increased the rhythmicity of the proverb and also emphasized its philosophy.
As for the function of assonance in headline writing, we can say that assonance, usually close together quite in rhyme, is aimed at achieving a particular effect of euphony, thus it also remains a preferable means in headline writing. Here are some examples:
McDonald’s Goes for Gold with Olympic Sponsorships (The Washington Post, Aug. 17, 2004)
牵手奥运,麦当劳的掘金路
Alliteration, assonance and metaphor can all be found in this headline. Thus being immersed in the musical world full of rhyme and witty humor, people get information pleasantly and leisurely.
The Digital Village (Business Week, Jun. 28, 2004)
数字化乡村
In this example, the front vowel /i/ is repeated four times. Hence the assonance employed here strengthens the music feature of language and is appealing to ears.
Although there is rhyme in Chinese, the rhyme comes at the end of the lines of poem.
Assonance is not the way to get rhyme in Chinese, so it is not translatable. In translation, one has to convey the novelty expressed by assonance in a creative way that may be of variety. For a clear arrangement, however, we shall discuss this in later section.
3.3 Consonance
As far as rhyme is concerned, consonance also plays a vital role in headline creation. Consonance means the repetition of consonants or of a consonant pattern, especially at the ends of words, as in ‘blank’ and ‘think’ or ‘strong’ and ‘string’. Due to its musical feature, consonance is commonly used in English news headlines.
As is shown in both headlines below, consonance remains the same, without any change of the final. So the echo of sound lasts from the beginning of the heading to the end, and thus produces a very pleasant musical effect:
If It Satisfies the Lips it will Air on the Hips (China Daily, Aug. 26, 1994)
口无遮拦肥臀难挡
The report tries to offer advices on how to lose weight and it persuades people not to have excessive food but to take more exercise to keep fit and healthy. In the headline, “hips” and “lips” constitute a consonance, which not only adds musical air but also implies the close relation between ‘lips’ and ‘hips’.
4. Humorous Characteristics of Headlines
What is humor? Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English described it as a capacity to cause or feel amusement. Just as humorous people tend to be more popular in life, English headlines that have a lot of humor in them enjoy much more popularity among the readers. In a comedic manner, humor in an English headline makes the reading easy and arouses smile and curiosity in the readers, who thus accept more easily what the author tries to convey.
Take a headline found on The Economist as an example. The title reads ‘A marriage made in heaven-and in the bathroom’, involving an idiom ‘Marriages are made in heaven’ and the phrase ‘in the bathroom’ which highlights the interesting identity of the “newly-wed”. As a matter of fact, this is a report about the proposed merger happened between P&G and Gillette, two of America’s biggest consumer-goods firms. When reading such a title, we build up a vivid image in our mind’s eyes and will enjoy digging into the story.
4.1 Pun
Pun means “humorous use of
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