Conveying indirect reservations through discursive redundancy

Elda Weizman

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper proposes a definition of redundancy whereby if a discourse pattern P1 is used to achieve speaker's meaning S, and discourse patterns P2 may equally achieve speaker's meaning S, then the use of both P1 and P2 in a given textual environment will be conceived of as redundant. Focusing on discourse patterns implying reservations in the written press in French and in Hebrew, it postulates two types of redundancy: conventional redundancy, whereby the identification of co-textual cues relies on a conventional combination, and non-conventional redundancy, which includes various combinations of patterns, supplemented by context-dependent explicitations. The textual analysis distinguishes between redundant and non-redundant patterns of reservations, and indicates a tendency towards redundancy in both languages, with an inclination towards a higher degree of informativeness in Hebrew. Findings are interpreted in terms of Gricean Cooperative Principle as well as the postulate of Quantity Scales, previously argued for by the author.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)295-304
Number of pages10
JournalLanguage Sciences
Volume33
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2011

Keywords

  • Cooperative Principle
  • Implicature
  • Informativeness
  • Irony
  • Redundancy
  • Reservations

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