Spontaneous playing with words.

Abstract

This paper investigates wordplays in Dutch compared with wordplays in Japanese. The Japanese wordplays were researched by Otake and Cutler (2013) and my research was based on theirs. Otake and Cutler have found three different categories of wordplays: homophones, embeddings and mutations. Those categories were also found in this current study in Dutch. The use of homophones, embeddings and mutations in Dutch were compared with Japanese. There was a numerical difference found: Japanese had more homophone wordplays than embeddings and mutations and Dutch had more embeddings than homophones and mutations. This difference was not significant. Another aspect that was researched is the influence of English on Dutch wordplays. In Japanese there was no English influence on the use of wordplays. In this study was found no influence of English on Dutch wordplays either.