In "A Confederacy of Dunces" there is an episode of an unintentional wordplay when two women from New Orlean talk by phone and one of them tells her friend about her nephew who graduated from police academy:
"When he graduated from the cops’ academy, you woulda thought he just made it outta the Ivory League".
She meant "Ivy League", eight private universities in the Northeastern United States. I need to analyse this pun, its semantic and idiomatic pecularities. Can we say that using this pun the author speaks ironically of university graduates and there is a reference to an idiom "to live in an ivory tower" here?
Thanks
"When he graduated from the cops’ academy, you woulda thought he just made it outta the Ivory League".
She meant "Ivy League", eight private universities in the Northeastern United States. I need to analyse this pun, its semantic and idiomatic pecularities. Can we say that using this pun the author speaks ironically of university graduates and there is a reference to an idiom "to live in an ivory tower" here?
Thanks