A Probe Into The Nature Of Repetition In English--An Adaptation-based Approach

One of the general principles in language use is the Economy Principle, which means that fewer words should be used to express more information in order to be concise and succinct. Lao She, a famous Chinese writer, once said: "The best language in the world should be the most succinct"; however, in some situations, repetitive utterances can be regarded as the best language, too. As an inseparable part of language use, repetition is unavoidable in communication. Repetition is different from wordiness in that the former is necessary, meaningful, but the latter is unnecessary and meaningless. In English, repetition can be used both in speech and in writing. As for its definition, almost no agreement has been reached among scholars and linguists and a lot of dictionaries have just supplied simple and general explanations of repetition. Most scholars have classified repetition into the repetition of identical linguistic forms and the repetition of different linguistic forms. In our opinion, the use of different linguistic forms such as synonyms, near-synonyms, superordinates and derivatives etc. to repeat the same idea belongs to restatement. Taking various reasons into consideration, the author of the present study focuses on the repetition of identical linguistic forms, including repeated phonemes, words, phrases, clauses, sentences or larger chunks of discourse. Restatement is excluded from the present study.Researchers in various fields at home and abroad have done fruitful researches on repetition from different research perspectives, ranging from grammar (Quirk et al, 1985), discourse analysis (Halliday&Hasan, 1975; Coulthard, 1977; Norick, 1987; Tannen, 1989; Hoey, 1991), rhetoric (Zhang Wenting, 1986; Chen Shidan, 1997), writing (Kane & Peters, 1969) to language acquisition (Ochs, 1974; Clark, 1977) etc. It seems that the emphasis of their researches is mainly on the description of the features of the forms, the classification, the stylistic distribution, somefunctions in concrete utterances of repetition and its relationship with the discourse cohesion and coherence; the generative mechanism of repetition has not drawn their full attention.After a relatively careful study of the relevant literature and especially Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, the author of this thesis holds that Verchueren's Adaptation Theory can provide us with a totally new perspective for a good analysis and understanding of the generative mechanism of repetition.Jef Verschueren, secretary of the International Pragmatics Association, published his book Understanding Pragmatics in 1999. In this book, he defines pragmatics as "a general cognitive, social, and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomenon in relation to their usage in forms of behavior" (Verschueren, 2000: 7), which is quite different from the traditional view on pragmatics. What's more, he proposes Adaptation Theory and it is regarded as a comprehensive pragmatic theory in the circle of linguistics because of its strong inclusive and explanatory capacity. According to his Adaptation Theory, using language is the continuous making of linguistic choices. These choices can be situated at any level of linguistic form: phonetic/phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, because just a slight change at any of these levels can cause great difference in pragmatic meaning. Repetition is essentially one of the embodiments of the choice of linguistic forms. Then, why does a language user repeat his/ her own or other's utterance? As we all know, language is not only the most key characteristic that distinguishes human beings from other animals, but also is an important medium or tool for human beings to make adaptation for a better life. Therefore, we can draw a conclusion that with the help of repetition a language user applies adaptation in order to realize his or her communicative goal or goals and achieve his or her survival in the long run.