Lexical cloning in English: A neo-Gricean lexical pragmatic analysis

Abstract

Lexical cloning, formally known as ‘contrastive focus reduplication’, refers to the phenomenon whereby there is a modifier reduplication of a lexical item. The reduplicated modifier, which receives a contrastive focus accent, is used to single out some privileged sense, in contrast to other senses, of an ambiguous, polysemous, vague or loose lexical expression (Huang, 2009). Lexical cloning is found in a variety of Englishes including American, Australian, British, Canadian, New Zealand, and South African English, but it is most widely used in American English. It is also a recent phenomenon. Furthermore, the use of lexical clones is largely restricted to a certain, informal conversational register of spoken English. Even the tokens of lexical cloning that are found in written English such as scripts for plays, films and TV programmes are largely representations of spontaneous spoken language (as a mode) in written form (as the medium). In this short paper, improving on Huang (2009), I shall first provide a description of lexical cloning in English. I shall then discuss context-dependency of lexical cloning. Finally, I shall outline a neo-Gricean lexical pragmatic analysis of this novel lexical phenomenon in the language.