Types and functions of repetition in American and Costa Rican newspaper editorials

Johnstone Koch (1983a) argues that Western modes of argumentation are based on a syllogistic model of proof while Arabic argumentation is characterized by repetition and paraphrasing of the arguments. She notes that repetition as a persuasive strategy is not used as frequently in English in formal contexts. However, English is the only language used by Johnstone Koch (1983a) to establish this contrast between Arabic and 'Western' modes of argumentation. This raises three important questions. (1) Are all 'Western' languages alike? (2) How frequently is repetition used persuasively in formal contexts in English and another Western language, Spanish? (3) How do the types and functions of repetition compare in English and Spanish?;Three types of repetition were identified in the newspaper editorials: lexical repetition, syntactic repetition, and paraphrase. Four functions were identified: humor, expansion, cohesion and persuasion.;The frequency of lexical and syntactic repetition was equally high in English and Spanish; however, the main function was cohesion in English and persuasion in Spanish. Furthermore, there was a greater number of paraphrases in the American editorials than in the Costa Rican. Moreover, in English, most of the paraphrases with a semantic function shifted the logical perspective from a negative to a positive syntactic phrasing while in Spanish it was the opposite. Nevertheless, the two languages distributed paraphrases with a pragmatic function similarly: the tendency was to shift from general to specific.;This study implies that the term 'Western' as used by Johnstone Koch (1983a) is not sufficient to account for the use of repetition. It demonstrates that English and Spanish differ with respect to their main functions of repetition. I also suggest that the cultural and linguistic influence of Arabic on Spanish for seven centuries is an important historical factor in explaining the persuasive use of lexical and syntactic repetition in Spanish. Finally, I conclude repetition might be universal, and therefore, repetition cannot be addressed using the dichotomy Western non-Western. The types and functions of repetition vary from one genre to another and from one sociolinguistic context to another.;To address these questions, I gathered a total of eighty editorials from two American newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, and from two Costa Rican newspapers, La Nacion and La Republica. These editorials were collected at random from September to November 1987.