Redundancy, repetition, and intensity in discourse

The notion of redundancy has been referred to in several different research domains, from the classic mathematical theory of communication to biology, to linguistics, etc. In a pragmatic perspective, which takes the multimodality of communication into account and focuses on several kinds of contextual and social components, the goal of interaction, as is underlined in the Gricean Cooperative Principle, together with other parameters (such as interactional, social, and psychological aspects, corresponding to different cognitive/pragmatic functions), become crucial.In discourse, and especially in face-to-face interaction, redundancy can have different linguistic forms, and perform various cognitive/pragmatic functions. To analyze some of these aspects, two convergent phenomena, repetition and intensity, will be discussed, and lastly correlated to the complexity of language.

Research highlights► An overview of redundancy across disciplines is provided at the beginning. ► In discourse, redundancy can have different linguistic forms, and perform various functions. ► Textual, contextual, interactional, social, and psychological parameters should be considered. ► Some aspects of redundancy, related to repetition and intensity are discussed and exemplified. ► Redundancy as a piece of the complex machinery of language as an interacting system.