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Repetition

It has already been pointed out that r ej^e ti t i о п is1 an expres­sive means of language used when the speaker is imder the stress of strong ""ей^зпг-Jt^^ as in the following "passajgeTfom Galsworthy:

"Stop!"—she cried, "Don't tell me! / don't want to hear, I don't want to hear what you've come for4/ don't want to hear."

The repetition of 'I don't want to hear', is not a stylistic device; it is a means by which the excited state of mind of the speaker is shown. This state of mind always manifests itself through intonation, which is suggested here by the words 'she cried'. In the written language, before direct speech is introduced one can always find words indicating the in­tonation, as sobbed, shrieked, passionately, etc. J. Vandryes writes:

"Repetition is also one of the devices, having its-origin in the emotive language. Repetition when applied to the logical language becomes simply an 1п81г^еп^о!^^а1Щпа1:._И8 origin is to be seen in the excitem^r^accompanymg the expression of a feeling being brought to its highest tension."1

When used as a stylistic device, repetition acquires quite differen furtfflmTrlt" doe^fl^^ O thencontrary, the stylistic device of repetition aims at logical emphasis, an emphasis necessary to fix the "attention of the reader on the key-word of the utterance. For example:

"For that was it! Ignorant of the long and stealthy march of passion, and of the state to which it had reduced Fleur; igno­rant of how Soames had watched her, ignorant of Fleur's reckless

desperation... — ignorant of all this, everybody felt aggrieved." .> ,<3<~ “ч.З (Galsworthy)

Repetition is classified, „according to compositional patterns. If rq^'te^^^orS^Tor phrase) corrres at the beginning of two or more consecutive" sentences^ clauses or phrases,' ""weT Have ~<Гпа p 'ТГсПГа, "asTn the example above. If the repeated unit is placed at the end рГШп-secutive sentences, clauses or phrases, we have the^Jtype of repetition called ep ip H 6 f a, as in:

"I am exactly the man to be placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the rest of mankind, in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in such a case as that.

(Dickens)

Here the repetition has a slightly different function: it becomes a ackground against which the statements preceding^jy^_j^e_at.eijffiit are'made to stand out more conspicuously. This may be called the ТПГ'с'К gr'o и n d f unct iohTir must be observed, however^ that "the logical function of the repetition, to give emphasis, does not fade when it assumes the background function. This is an additional function. С Repetition may also be arranged in the form of a frame: the initial parts of a syntactical unit, in most cases of a paragraph, are repeated at the end of it,

"Poor doWs dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the eternal road and asking guidance. Poor, little doll's dressmaker". (Dickens)

This compositional pattern of repetition is called framing. The semantic nuances of different compositional structures of repeti­tion have been little looked into. But even a superficial examination will show that framing,ATor example, makes the whole utterance more compact aftd mo?e complete. Framing^is" most effective in singling out paragraphs.

Among other compositional models of repetition is / inJ^J^njS or r e djLfiJ,J',.^.^,.lIj2.^ (also known as -a n a d i p l о s i s). The sfruc-TGriToirfhis device is the following: the last word or phraseof^pnejgart of an utterance is repeated at the* begmnTng of the next part, thus hookingthe two partsback on his tracks arid pick up his last word.

^ instead of moving on. seems foUouble

"Freeman and slave... earned on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that' each time ended, either in a revolu­tionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." (Marx, Engels)

Any repetition of a unit of language will inevitably cause some slight modification of meaning, a modification suggested by a noticeable change in the intonation with which the repeated word is pronounced.

Sometimes a writer may use the linking device several times in one utterance, for example:

"Л smile would come into Mr. Pickwick's face: the smile ex­tended into a laugh: the laugh into a roar, and the roar became general." (Dickens)

or:

"For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs, sighs wihes, wishes words,

and words a letter." (Byron)

This compositional pattern of repetition is also called chain-/jjZjJLLU-XUL /. <£ ,a В ,6* J •'-—•- . _ '''v/hat are the most obvious stylistic functions of repetition?

The first, the primary one,J^J^^jnJjSl^^ Intensi­fication is the direct outcome oTTH^"iisF*ofTneexpressive means em­ployed in ordinary intercourse; but when used in other compositional patterns, the immediate emotional charge is greatly suppressed and is replaced by a purely aesthetic aim, as in the following example:

THE ROVER

A weary lot is thine, fair maid,

A weary tot is thine! To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,

And press the rue for wine. A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien

A feather of the blue, A doublet of the Lincoln green —*

No more of me you knew

My Love! No more of me you knew. (Walter Scott) ,„

Tjj^ejrepetition of the whole line in its full form requires intexpretati.on. <j£ SupeFTmear ImStysis based on associations aroused by the sense of '* the whole poem suggests that this repetition expresses the regret of the Rover for his Love's unhappy lot. Compare also the repetition in the line of Thomas Moore's:

"Those evening bells! Those evening bells!"

Meditation, sadness, reminiscence and other psychological and emotional states of mind are suggested by the repetition of the phrase with the intensifier 'those'.

The distributional model of repetition, th£ aim of which isjnten-sification, is simple: it is immediate succession of the parts repeated/ Repetition may also stress monotony of action, it may- suggest fa­tigue, or despair, or hopelessness, or doom, as in:

"What has my life been? Fag and grind, fag and grind. Turn the wheel, turn the wheel" (Dickens)

Here the rhythm of the repeated parts makes the monotony and hopelessness of the speaker's life still more keenly felt.

This function of repetition is to be observed in Thomas Hood's po­em "The Song of the Shirt" where different forms of repetition are em­ployed.

"Work—work—work!

Till the brain begins to swim! Work—work—work

Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band,

Band, and gusset and seam,— Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream." Of course, the main idea, that of long and exhausting work, is ex­pressed by lexical means: work 'till the brain begins to swim' and 4he eyes are heavy and dim7, till, finally, 'I fall asleep.' But the repetition here strongly enforces this idea and, moreover, brings in additional nu­ances of meaning.

In grammars it is pointed out that the repetition of words connected by the conjunct ion and will express reiteration or frequentative action. For example:

"Fledgeby knocked and rang, and Fledgeby rang and knocked, but no one came."

There are phrases containing repetition which have become lexical units of the English language, as on and on, ^^^.^i^Qver^jagqtn and again and others. They all express repetition or continuity of the action, as in:

"He played the tune over and over again."

Sometimes this shade of meaning is backed up by meaningful words, as in:

I sat desperately, working and working.

They talked and talked all night.

The telephone fang and rang but no one answered.

The idea oLcontinuity is expressed here not only by the repetition but also by modifiers such as 'all night'.

Background repetition, which we have already pointed out, is some­times used to stress the ordinarily unstressed elements of the utterance. Here is a good example:

"I am attached to you. But / can't consent and won't consent and I never did consent and / never will consent to be lost in you." (Dickens)

The emphatic element in this utterance is not the repeated word 'consent' but the modal words 'can't', 'won't', 'will', and also the em­phatic 'did'. Thus the repetition here loses its main function and only serves as a means by which other elements are made to stand out clear-fylIt is worthy of note that in this sentence very strong stress falls-on the modal verbs and 'did' but not on the repeated 'consent* as is usually the case with the stylistic device.

Like many stylistic devices, repetition is polyfunctional. The func­tions enumerated do not cover all its varieties. One of those already 214

mentioned, the rhythmical function, must not be under-estimated when studying the effects produced by repetition. Most of the examples given above give rhythm to the utterance. In fact, any repetition enhances the rhythmical aspect of the utterance.

There is a variety of repetition which we shall call "root-repetition",

as in:

"To live again in the youth of the young." (Galsworthy)

or,

"He loves a dodge for its own sake; being...—the dodgerest of all the

dodgers" (Dickens)

or,

"Schemmer, Karl Schemmer, was a brute, a brutish brute." (London)

In root-repetition it is not the same words that are repeated but the "same root. Consequently we are faced with different words having different meanings (youth:young', brutish: brute), but the shades of mean­ing are "perfectly clear.

Another variefy of repetition may be called s у п о пут i с a I rep­etition. This is the repetition of the same idea by using synonymous words and jphfases which by adding a slightly different nuance of mean­ing intensify the impact of the utterance, as in.

"...are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes'? Is there not blood enough upon your penal code!" (Byron)

Here the meaning of the words 'capital punishments' and 'statutes* is repeated in the next sentence by the contextual synonyms 'blood' and 'penal code'.

Here is another example from Keats' sonnet "The Grasshopper and

the Cricket."

"The poetry of earth is never dead... -The poetry of earth is ceasing never..."

'There are two terms frequently used to show the negative attitude of the critic to all kinds of synonymical repetitions. These are p I e о-"*" /ГаТШ and ta и to I o g y. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines pleonasm as "the use of more words in a sentence than are necessary to express the meaning; redundancy of expression." Tautology is defined &" as "the repetition of the same statement; the repetition (especially in < the immediate context) of the same word or phrase or of the same idea or statement in other words; usually as a fault of style." Here are two examples generally given as illustrations:

"It was a clear starry night, and not a cloud was to be seen"

"He was the only survivor; no one else was saved"

It is not necessary to distinguish between these two terms, the distinc­tion being very fine. Any repetition may be found faulty if it is not motivated by the aesthetic purport of the writer. On the other hand, any seemingly unnecessary repetition of words or of ideas expressed in different words may be justified by the aim of the communication

For example, "The daylight is fading, the sun is setting, and night is coming on" as given in a textbook of English composition is regarded as tautological, whereas the same sentence may serve as an artistic exam­ple depicting the approach of night.

A certain Russian literary critic has wiittily called pleonasm "stylis­tic elephantiasis/' a disease in which the expression d'f'TiTieTSea'^wells

up* arid loses its force. Pleonasm may also_be called "the art of wordy

—• ~ --••••• ••“ — - - .-~~M4~...^.№.~~v~.~ —.., _..

"Both pleonasm and, tautology may be acceptable in oratory inasmuch as they help the au.di.ence.,to.£raspjhe meaning of the utterance. 1ц this case, however, the repetition of ide^jfsli^^ although it may have no aesthetic function! '~'" —"-—•”**•——~,,-..,

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