The merchant's contribution to linguistic play becomes especially distinct in the final dialogue, in bed with his wife.
The phrase English as she is spoke is nowadays used allusively, in a form of linguistic play, as a stereotypical example of bad English grammar.
This sense of linguistic play, usually missing from subcontinental poetry in English, is abundant in Hoskote's work.
The poetry substitutes for the love and for the lovers - Astrophel's and Stella's reality is also only within the bounds of linguistic play.
In each case linguistic play will be restricted by reference to something the language may not refer to at all.
Virtually without expressiveness, wit or linguistic play, he seems to have wrung the neck of eloquence with such thoroughness that the verbal environment around him has become impoverished.
K. Satchidanandan notes that his poems revel in linguistic play and thus interiorize the ontological essence of poetry.
These devices can vary enormously in nature and scope: from the overall presentation of narrative structure down to linguistic play.
Now the conversation varied as to the speaker's interest, allowing for a greater field of linguistic play.
This kind of linguistic play with words and meaning, has marked the playwright for his interest and most keen observations on the aesthetics of language.