A visual pun is a pun involving an image or images (in addition to or instead of language).
Visual puns in which the image is at odds with the inscription are common in cartoons such as Lost Consonants or The Far Side as well as in Dutch gable stones. For instance the "Batenburg" stone from Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, shown here puns on the words baten (to profit) and burg (castle) which together make up the name of a village near Nijmegen. European heraldry contains the technique of canting arms, which can be considered punning.
Famous quotes containing the words visual and/or pun:
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)