There's a particular style of joke/pun in Japanese that I'm not sure how to
describe, so let me provide some examples:

> カミングスーン、神だけに。

(said by someone who has recently become a 神)

> バスケットだけに助っ人募集中。

(said by someone who is looking for people to help out a basketball team)

> A: それに、学校の皆に会えば、キャッチフレーズが思いつきそうだなあって。  
>  B: 思いつく？  
>  C: お餅つきだけに！

(following a conversation about giving mochi to classmates and trying to come
up with a catchphrase)

* * *

Now that we've established what I'm talking about, my questions are as
follows:

  1. Is there a name for these jokes? (Would you just call them ダジャレ?)

  2. What is going on grammatically in these jokes? This doesn't seem to be one of the simple/compositional usages of だけ＋に found e.g. [here at dictionary.goo.ne.jp](http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/136140/m0u/).

  3. Is there a rough English equivalent of these jokes? I've seen translations that basically introduce a pun related to the topic of the joke and then append "No pun intended", presumably corresponding to the だけに part. Of course, joke translation is a peril-fraught thing, so I'm not placing too much stock in this.
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2014-06-12T04:48:55.650
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2014-06-12T16:56:01.043
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question
grammar puns
How do jokes with "だけに" work?
1. This kind of (rather poor) pun is generally considered to be [おやじギャグ](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AA%E3%83%A4%E3%82%B8%E3%82%AE%E3%83%A3%E3%82%B0). As far as I know, there is no word specifically referring to "AだけにB" jokes.

  2. I think the third meaning of that dictionary (であるから、それにふさわしく) can be applied. 「バスケット, therefore I say, スケット」.

  3. Sorry, I'm not the right person to answer this part of your question. However, "no pun intended" seems to be very loose translation, because a pun is certainly intended when you use "だけに" in this way.
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answer