Conveying indirect reservations through discursive redundancy

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.