A Pragmatic Study Of Redundancy Phenomenon In Famous English Speeches

In daily life, it is easy for people to mix up the concept of redundancy with crap,repetition, surplus, etc. In that sense, redundancy is something rather negative. However,many linguists view redundancy as a natural and significant linguistic phenomenon, withoutwhich language will become rather pale. The functions of redundancy in various genres havebeen probed in terms of information transmission, disambiguation and maintaining socialrelationships. Concerning language use in public speeches, one kind of carefully-preparedgenre, redundancy studies have been scarce. The current study looks at redundancyphenomenon in a particular type of speech-motivational speeches.The study uses purpose-intention principle, adaptation theory and context theory toanalyze the general redundancy phenomena in15famous English speeches. Also it usesShannon’s redundancy calculation formula, quantitative and qualitative analysis. In detail, thestudy separately analyzes every form of redundancy and states theirs functions. Then, itdiscusses the features and functions of redundancy theoretically and summarizes theredundancy rules.The study finds that redundancy is indispensable in famous English speeches. What’smore, the proportion of redundancy accounts for nearly one-third to two thirds of the wholespeech. And the largest proportion of redundancy is repetition. As for the pragmatic rhetoricalfunctions of redundancy, such conclusions can be drawn: first of all, it reflects andemphasizes the communicative intention. The speaker’s redundancy not only demonstratesthe meaning of words but also has some special intentions. Secondly, its use eliminatesambiguity. In the process of communication, due to different contexts of the expression, the audience, and cultural background, the hearers may have different interpretations of the samething. Therefore, appropriate redundant information can help audience find the right choiceamong many options and get the accurate meaning. The speaker uses appropriate redundancystrategy to enhance the expressive force of language, to ease the burden on the listener’scognition and to shorten the distance between the speaker and the audience. Thirdly, it canmake expressions euphemistic. The implication in redundancy can make the words moreeuphemistic, the tone softer and the language more polite and considerate.