Word repetition in speech

All of us are very well acquainted with the speech “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr. In the speech he used the phrase “I have a dream” 8 times. He does that to emphasize the importance of integrated and united America to the audience.

What if this repetition had not been there in this speech? Do you think that this speech would have been so famous? Speeches with repetition create an enormous impact on the audience.

Repetition is a literary device that very often is used in speeches or any piece of writing. It has a profound impact on the readers or audiences. It means to repeat words, phrases, or sounds to call attention to what is being repeated.

Here’s the game plan for this article.

Why are Speeches with Repetition so Impactful?

1. It Persuades the Audience to Give the Theme Importance

Research paper by Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino has shown when a sentence or phrase is repeated over and over again it is considered to be the truth by the audience. This is called the illusory truth effect. This effect allows the audience to be on the same page with the speaker.

2. When we repeat words or phrases with the theme involved in them we strengthen the theme

An example could be a poem by Robert Frost, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”. The poem “and miles to go before I sleep” is repeated twice at the end. The poet wants to grab attention to death, but before death, he has responsibilities to fulfill. 

Please note: repetition along with the style of speaking and body language plays an integral role.

You can check out our articles on body language and learn about appropriate body language while delivering a speech, the link also takes you to articles that provide additional and intriguing information about body language. This information is often neglected but turns out to be crucial.  

3. It Gives Rhythm to the Speech 

Repetition is an integral part of poetry. Repetition gives rhythm or a pattern to poetry. That means with repetition in a poem or speech, the audience tries to anticipate the next words or phrases. 

The audience does that because they have seen the pattern in the poem or speech and therefore they automatically try to guess the next words. Hence making your speech interactive and interesting.    

Check out the victory speech given by Barack Obama, “yes we can”. 

4. Repetition helps in Learning and Recall

Research published by Frontier in Human Neuroscience has shown repetition helps in learning and increases memory performance for detailed and associative information. Repetition also helps in the recall of the information that is put in memory by association. 

New research by Carnegie Mellon University psychologists shows when you associate new information with previously known information chances of remembering the information increase. 

The human brain is designed in a way that information gets inside the memory when repeated. That’s also true for forming habits. A habit is formed when an activity is repeated over and over again for days.  

With repetition, you will be able to get your phrases or words inside the memory of the audience, and hence that will make people remember you and your speech. 

How can you Create Speeches with Repetition?

Choose the appropriate word, phrase, or sound according to your speech: 

The sound, word, or phrase for the speech which you want to repeat should be chosen such that it becomes easy for the brain to process it. 

Use smaller and simpler words and sentences to be accessible for the audience.

Let’s look at an example:

“I felt happy because I saw that the others were happy and because I knew I should feel happy, but I wasn’t really happy.”

Roberto Bolano

The word “happy” is repeated here. Happy is the fundamental word we use to connect positive feelings with.  

1. Frequency

The speech should be constructed in such a way that the repetition is spread out evenly throughout the speech. This allows the brain to process information. The clogged-up information overwhelms and confuses the audience.  

The Gettysburg address by former US president Abraham Lincoln is a good example of this.

2. Nature of Speech 

If the topic you choose to speak about is highly emotional, then the repetition can be highly frequent. It gives a dramatic effect to the speech. But if the topic is informational then the repetition if used frequently can create awkwardness.

For highly informative speeches you can use phrases or words which convey the same meaning.  The audience is likely to respond optimistically with such an approach. In such a way the audience has an impression that you have thoroughly researched and studied the topic. 

3. Familiarity

Use repetition with objects with which the audience is familiar. Studies, as mentioned above, show when you associate new information with already known information the chances of remembering it increases. 

That is how the audience will remember your speech or the information you shared even when the speech is over. 

An example could be: 

“Almost nothing was more annoying than having our wasted time wasted on something not worth wasting”

Joshua Ferris (Then We Came to the End)

This seems to be the story of every frustrated employee.  

4. Rule of 3

History says when anything is presented in a group of three it looks or sounds or is sensed complete. Did you notice what I did there?

Let’s look at some examples: 

The three wise monkeys: “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”

Fire safety slogan: stop, drop and roll 

Rights in US declaration of independence: Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Figures of speech that use repetition: 

Numerous figures of speech use repetition according to sound, words, phrases, etc. You can understand each of them with examples and that will give you an understanding about using them in a grammatically correct way. 

Things to Keep in Mind While you are Using Repetition

1. Don’t Cram Up

When you use repetition without proper intervals or jam up information, it gets difficult for the audience to process that information. The human brain is designed to take simple information at frequent intervals.

2. Don’t Use Words Lazily

When you repeat words and phrases over and over again without any purpose or definite meaning attached to them, the audience becomes disinterested. That happens because they think you do not have a better choice of words.

For example: 

I went to the garden, she was still there in the garden, and I came back home from the garden. 

3. Don’t Use Repetition More than 5-6 Times

Studies have shown moderate to low levels of repetition can serve as a great persuasive tactic. But when it is used more than that it serves the opposite purpose. Studies say the audience seems to disagree with arguments when repetition is used excessively.  

Nobody is born with the skills of King Martin Luther or Barack Obama. They practiced for hours to improve their oratory skills. So don’t be afraid of failures or mistakes, execute and make use of every opportunity you have. Learning from your failures will make you a good orator. 

Speech repetition occurs when individuals speak the sounds that they have heard another person pronounce or say. In other words, it is the saying by one individual of the spoken vocalizations made by another individual. Speech repetition requires the person repeating the utterance to have the ability to map the sounds that they hear from the other person’s oral pronunciation to similar places and manners of articulation in their own vocal tract.

Such speech input/output imitation often occurs independently of speech comprehension such as in speech shadowing in which people automatically say words heard in earphones, and the pathological condition of echolalia in which people reflexively repeat overheard words. That links to speech repetition of words being separate in the brain to speech perception. Speech repetition occurs in the dorsal speech processing stream, and speech perception occurs in the ventral speech processing stream. Repetitions are often incorporated unawares by that route into spontaneous novel sentences immediately or after delay after the storage in phonological memory.

In humans, the ability to map heard input vocalizations into motor output is highly developed because of the copying ability playing a critical role in children’s rapid expansion of their spoken vocabulary. In older children and adults, that ability remains important, as it enables the continued learning of novel words and names and additional languages. That repetition is also necessary for the propagation of language from generation to generation. It has also been suggested that the phonetic units out of which speech is made have been selected upon by the process of vocabulary expansion and vocabulary transmissions because children prefer to copy words in terms of more easily-imitated elementary units.

PropertiesEdit

AutomaticEdit

Vocal imitation happens quickly: words can be repeated within 250-300 milliseconds^[1] both in normals (during speech shadowing)^[2] and during echolalia. The imitation of speech syllables possibly happens even more quickly: people begin imitating the second phone in the syllable [ao] earlier than they can identify it (out of the set [ao], [aæ] and [ai]).^[3] Indeed, «…simply executing a shift to [o] upon detection of a second vowel in [ao] takes very little longer than does interpreting and executing it as a shadowed response».^[3] Neurobiologically this suggests «…that the early phases of speech analysis yield information which is directly convertible to information required for speech production».^[3] Vocal repetition can be done immediately as in speech shadowing and echolalia. It can also be done after the pattern of pronunciation is stored in short-term memory or long-term memory. It automatically uses both auditory and where available visual information about how a word is produced.^[4][5]

The automatic nature of speech repetition was noted by Carl Wernicke, the late nineteenth century neurologist, who observed that «The primary speech movements, enacted before the development of consciousness, are reflexive and mimicking in nature..».^[6]

Independent of speechEdit

Vocal imitiation arises in development before speech comprehension and also babbling: 18-week-old infants spontaneously copy vocal expressions provided the accompanying voice matches.^[7] Imitation of vowels has been found as young as 12 weeks.^[8] It is independent of native language, language skills, word comprehension and a speaker’s intelligence. Many autistic and some mentally disabled people engage in the echolalia of overheard words (often their only vocal interaction with others) without understanding what they echo.^{[9][10][11][12]} Reflex uncontrolled echoing of others words and sentences occurs in roughly half of those with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome.^[13] The ability to repeat words without comprehension also occurs in mixed transcortical aphasia where it links to the sparing of the short-term phonological store.^[14]

The ability to repeat and imitate speech sounds occurs separately to that of normal speech. Speech shadowing provides evidence of a ‘privileged’ input/output speech loop that is distinct to the other components of the speech system.^[15] Neurocognitive research likewise finds evidence of a direct (nonlexical) link between phonological analysis input and motor programming output.^[16][17][18]

Effector independentEdit

Speech sounds can be imitatively mapped into vocal articulations in spite of vocal tract anatomy differences in size and shape due to gender, age and individual anatomical variability. Such variability is extensive making input output mapping of speech more complex than a simple mapping of vocal track movements. The shape of the mouth varies widely: dentists recognize three basic shapes of palate: trapezoid, ovoid, and triangular; six types of malocclusion between the two jaws; nine ways teeth relate to the dental arch and a wide range of maxillary and mandible deformities.^[19] Vocal sound can also vary due to dental injury and dental caries. Other factors that do not impede the sensory motor mapping needed for vocal imitation are gross oral deformations such as hare-lips, cleft palates or amputations of the tongue tip, pipe smoking, pencil biting and teeth clinching (such as in ventriloquism). Paranasal sinuses vary between individuals 20-fold in volume, and differ in the presence and the degree of their asymmetry.^[20][21]

Diverse linguistic vocalizationsEdit

Vocal imitation occurs potentially in regard to a diverse range of phonetic units and types of vocalization. The world’s languages use consonantal phones that differ in thirteen imitable vocal tract place of articulations (from the lips to the glottis). These phones can potentially be pronounced with eleven types of imitable manner of articulations (nasal stops to lateral clicks). Speech can be copied in regard to its social accent, intonation, pitch and individuality (as with entertainment impersonators). Speech can be articulated in ways which diverge considerably in speed, timbre, pitch, loudness and emotion. Speech further exists in different forms such as song, verse, scream and whisper. Intelligible speech can be produced with pragmatic intonation and in regional dialects and foreign accents. These aspects are readily copied: people asked to repeat speech-like words imitate not only phones but also accurately other pronunciation aspects such as fundamental frequency,^[22] schwa-syllable expression,^[22] voice spectra and lip kinematics,^[23] voice onset times,^[24] and regional accent.^[25]

Language acquisitionEdit

Vocabulary expansionEdit

In 1874 Carl Wernicke proposed^[26] that the ability to imitate speech plays a key role in language acquisition. This is now a widely researched issue in child development.^{[27][28][29][30][31]} A study of 17,000 one and two word utterances made by six children between 18 months to 25 months found that, depending upon the particular infant, between 5% and 45% of their words might be mimicked.^[27] These figures are minima since they concern only immediately heard words. Many words that may seem spontaneous are in fact delayed imitations heard days or weeks previously.^[28] At 13 months children who imitate new words (but not ones they already know) show a greater increase in noun vocabulary at four months and non noun vocabulary at eight months.^[29] A major predictor of vocabulary increase in both 20 months,^[32] 24 months,^[33] and older children between 4 and 8 years is their skill in repeating nonword phone sequences (a measure of mimicry and storage).^[30][31] This is also the case with children with Down’s syndrome .^[34] The effect is larger than even age: in a study of 222 two-year-old children that had spoken vocabularies ranging between 3–601 words the ability to repeat nonwords accounted for 24% of the variance compared to 15% for age and 6% for gender (girls better than boys).^[33]

Nonvocabulary expansion uses of imitationEdit

Imitation provides the basis for making longer sentences than children could otherwise spontaneously make on their own.^[35] Children analyze the linguistic rules, pronunciation patterns, and conversational pragmatics of speech by making monologues (often in crib talk) in which they repeat and manipulate in word play phrases and sentences previously overheard.^[36] Many proto-conversations involve children (and parents) repeating what each other has said in order to sustain social and linguistic interaction. It has been suggested that the conversion of speech sound into motor responses helps aid the vocal «alignment of interactions» by «coordinating the rhythm and melody of their speech».^[37] Repetition enables immigrant monolingual children to learn a second language by allowing them to take part in ‘conversations’.^[38] Imitation related processes aids the storage of overheard words by putting them into speech based short- and long-term memory.^[39]

Language learningEdit

The ability to repeat nonwords predicts the ability to learn second-language vocabulary.^[40] A study found that adult polyglots performed better in short-term memory tasks such as repeating nonword vocalizations compared to nonpolyglots though both are otherwise similar in general intelligence, visuo-spatial short-term memory and paired-associate learning ability.^[41] Language delay in contrast links to impairments in vocal imitation.^[42]

Speech repetition and phonesEdit

Electrical brain stimulation research upon the human brain finds that 81% of areas that show disruption of phone identification are also those in which the imitating of oral movements is disrupted and vice versa;^[43] Brain injuries in the speech areas show a 0.9 correlation between those causing impairments to the copying of oral movements and those impairing phone production and perception.^[44]

MechanismEdit

Spoken words are sequences of motor movements organized around vocal tract gesture motor targets.^[45] Vocalization due to this is copied in terms of the motor goals that organize it rather than the exact movements with which it is produced. These vocal motor goals are auditory. According to James Abbs^[46] ‘For speech motor actions, the individual articulatory movements would not appear to be controlled with regard to three- dimensional spatial targets, but rather with regard to their contribution to complex vocal tract goals such as resonance properties (e.g., shape, degree of constriction) and or aerodynamically significant variables’. Speech sounds also have duplicable higher-order characteristics such as rates and shape of modulations and rates and shape of frequency shifts.^[47] Such complex auditory goals (which often link—though not always—to internal vocal gestures) are detectable from the speech sound which they create.

NeurologyEdit

Dorsal speech processing stream functionEdit

Two cortical processing streams exist: a ventral one which maps sound onto meaning, and a dorsal one, that maps sound onto motor representations. The dorsal stream projects from the posterior Sylvian fissure at the temporoparietal junction, onto frontal motor areas, and is not normally involved in speech perception.^[48]Carl Wernicke identified a pathway between the left posterior superior temporal sulcus (a cerebral cortex region sometimes called the Wernicke’s area) as a centre of the sound «images» of speech and its syllables that connected through the arcuate fasciculus with part of the inferior frontal gyrus (sometimes called the Broca’s area) responsible for their articulation.^[6] This pathway is now broadly identified as the dorsal speech pathway, one of the two pathways (together with the ventral pathway) that process speech.^[49] The posterior superior temporal gyrus is specialized for the transient representation of the phonetic sequences used for vocal repetition.^[50] Part of the auditory cortex also can represent aspects of speech such as its consonantal features.^[51]

Mirror neuronsEdit

Mirror neurons have been identified that both process the perception and production of motor movements. This is done not in terms of their exact motor performance but an inference of the intended motor goals with which it is organized.^[52] Mirror neurons that both perceive and produce the motor movements of speech have been identified.^[53] Speech is mirrored constantly into its articulations since speakers cannot know in advance that a word is unfamiliar and in need of repetition—which is only learnt after the opportunity to map it into articulations has gone. Thus, speakers if they are to incorporate unfamiliar words into their spoken vocabulary
must by default map all spoken input.^[54]

Sign languageEdit

Words in sign languages, unlike those in spoken ones, are made not of sequential units but of spatial configurations of subword unit arrangements, the spatial analogue of the sonic-chronological morphemes of spoken language.^[55] These words, like spoken ones, are learnt by imitation. Indeed, rare cases of compulsive sign-language echolalia exist in otherwise language-deficient deaf autistic individuals born into signing families.^[55] At least some cortical areas neurobiologically active during both sign and vocal speech, such as the auditory cortex, are associated with the act of imitation.^[56]

Nonhuman animalsEdit

BirdsEdit

Birds learn their songs from those made by other birds. In several examples, birds show highly developed repetition abilities: the Sri Lankan Greater racket-tailed drongo (Dicrurus paradiseus) copies the calls of predators and the alarm signals of other birds^[57] Albert’s lyrebird (Menura alberti) can accurately imitate the satin bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus),^[58]

Research upon avian vocal motor neurons finds that they perceive their song as a series of articulatory gestures as in humans.^[59] Birds that can imitate humans, such as the Indian hill myna (Gracula religiosa), imitate human speech by mimicking the various speech formants, created by changing the shape of the human vocal tract, with different vibration frequencies of its internal tympaniform membrane.^[60] Indian hill mynahs also imitate such phonetic characteristics as voicing, fundamental frequencies, formant transitions, nasalization, and timing, through their vocal movements are made in a different way from those of the human vocal apparatus.^[60]

Nonhuman mammalsEdit

• Bottlenose dolphins can show spontaneous vocal mimicry of computer-generated whistles.^[61]
• Killer whales can mimic the barks of California sea lions.^[62]
• Harbor seals can mimic in a speech-like manner one or more English words and phrases^[63]
• Elephants can imitate trunk sounds.^[64]
• Lesser spear-nosed bat can learn their call structure from artificial playback.^[65]
• An orangutan has spontaneously copied the whistles of humans.^[66]

ApesEdit

Apes taught language show an ability to imitate language signs with chimpanzees such as Washoe who was able to learn with his arms a vocabulary of 250 American Sign Language gestures. However, such human trained apes show no ability to imitate human speech vocalizations.^[67]

See alsoEdit

FootnotesEdit

STYLISTIC
DEVICES MAKING USE OF THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE UNITS

One
of the most prominent places among the SDs dealing with the
arrangement of members of the sentence decidedly belongs to
rep­etition.
We
have already seen the repetition of a phoneme (as in allit­eration),
of
a morpheme (as in rhyming,
or plain morphemic repetition). As
a syntactical SD repetition is recurrence of the same word, word
combination, phrase for two and more times. According to the place
which the repeated unit occupies in a sentence (utterance),
repetition is classified into several types:

Lexical
repetition is
often used to increase the degree of
emotion:

‘Oh,
No, John, No, John, No, John, No!’(from
a
folk song) And
like a rat without a tail, I’ll do, I’ll do, I’ll do. (Shakespeare)

Alone,
alone, all, all alone,

Alone
on a wide, wide sea. (Coleridge)

The
repetition of the same elements at the beginning of several sentences
is called anaphora.
Anaphora:
the
beginning of two or more successive sentences (clauses) is repeated:
a…,
a…, a… .
The
main stylistic function of anaphora is not so much to emphasize the
repeated unit as to create the background for the nonrepeated unit,
which, through its novelty, becomes foregrounded. The
background-forming function of anaphora is also evident from the kind
of words which are repeated anaphorically. Pay attention to their
semantics and syntactical function in the sentence when work­ing
with Exercise I.

Should
auld acquaintance be forgot

And
never brought to mind?

Should
auld acquaintance be forgot

And
days of auld long syne? (Burns)

The
repetition of the same elements at the end of several sentences is
called epiphora.
Epiphora:
the
end of successive sentences (clauses) is repeated:

…a,
…a, …a.
The
main function of epiphora is to add stress to

the final words of
the sentence.

/
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)

Framing:
the
beginning of the sentence is repeated in the end,

thus forming
the «frame» for the non-repeated part of the sen­tence
(utterance): a…
a.
The
function of framing is to eluci­date the notion mentioned in the
beginning of the sentence. Between two appearances of the repeated
unit there comes the

developing middle part of the sentence
which explains and

clarifies what was introduced in the
beginning, so that by the

time it is used for the second time
its semantics is concretized

and specified.

Obviously
– this is a streptococcal infection. Obviously.

Catch
repetition (anadiplosis):
the
end of one clause (sentence)

is repeated in the beginning of the
following one: …a,
a…
.

Specification
of the semantics occurs here too, but on a more

modest level.

And
a great desire for
peace,
peace
of no matter what kind, swept through her.

Chain
repetition
presents
several successive anadiploses:
…a,

a…b,
b…c, c…
. The
effect is that of the smoothly developing

logical reasoning.

The
maiden looked at the
butler,
the
butler
looked at the
servant,
the
servant
looked at the maiden, the whole kitchen inquisition …

Ordinary
repetition
has
no definite place in the sentence and the

repeated unit occurs
in various positions: …a,
…a…, a…
. Or­dinary
repetition emphasizes both the logical and the emo­tional
meanings of the reiterated word (phrase).

Halfway
along the right-hand side of the
dark brown
hall was a dark
brown
door with a dark
brown
settee beside it.

Successive
repetition
is
a string of closely following each other

reiterated units: …a,
a,
a….
This
is the most emphatic type of

repetition which signifies the peak
of emotions of the speaker.

On her
father being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure.
Sure. Sure.

As
you must have seen from the brief description, repetition is a
powerful means of emphasis. Besides, repetition adds rhythm and
balance to the utterance.

The
term Syntactic
repetition refers
to repetition of syntactic elements or constructions. This may
include syntactic tautology (синтаксическая
тавтология), such as, for example, the repetition of the
subject of a sentence, which is typical of English folklore:

Little
Miss
Muffet

She
sat
on a tuffet. (Nursery rhyme)

and
also of later stylisations of the ballad character:

Ellen
Adair she loved
me well,

Against
her father’s and mother’s will. (Tennison)

The
skipper
he blew
a whiff from his pipe

And
a scornful laugh laughed he.
(Longfellow)

Syntactic
tautology may be used in literary works to

represent
the speech of a person of little education:

Well,
Judge
Thatcher, he took
it. …(M.
Twain)

Repetition
of the subject may also be combined with giving
it
some more specific additional information:

She
has developed power, this
woman —
this
—
wife
of his!

(Galsworthy)

Oh,
it‘s
a fine life, the
life of the gutter. (Shaw)

A
special variant of syntactic repetition is syntactic
parallelism,
which
means repetition of similar syntactic
constructions
in the text in order to strengthen the emotional
impact
or expressiveness of the description.

The
function of rhythm and balance is the major one in
par­allel constructions which
may be viewed as a purely syntactical type of repetition for here we
deal with the reiteration of the structure of sev­eral successive
sentences (clauses), and not of their lexical «flesh». True
enough, parallel constructions almost always include some type of
lexical repetition too, and such a convergence produces a very
strong
effect, foregrounding at one go logical, rhythmic, emotive and
expressive aspects of the utterance.

The
seeds ye sow —
another
reaps,

The
robes ye weave — another wears,

The
arms ye forge — another bears. (Shelley)

Few
of them will return to their countries’, they will not embrace

our
holy religion’, they will not adopt our manners. (B.
Franklin)

There
were real silver spoons to stir the tea with, and real china

cups
to drink it out of, and plates of the same to hold the cakes.
(Dickens)

Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]

• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #

repetition is called a variety of figures of speech, which are based on the repeated use of some units of language (eg, words, syntax, morphine or sounds) within the same sentence or the meaning of the text segment.They are applied in order to make the statement more expressive.

Depending on the criteria underlying the division, there are several types of repeats.For example, it can be taken into account the type of units which occur repeatedly.Then emit a sound, morpheme, syntactic and lexical repetition.

Another criterion is the location of those units that meet several times.Depending on this, there are repetitions:

• distant (when other elements of the text are the same between the words, morphemes, and so on. N.);
• contact (when units that are repeated one after the other).

important and how faithfully reproduced the original word, sound or design.Depending on this, there are repetitions of partial and full.

their classification also affects the syntactic position in a particular segment of speech (verse, paragraph, sentence, line) identical units that occur many times.Thus in the case of orderly repeats it to all the same.If the position is not disordered syntax combines these units.

The literary text is most often used is the lexical repetition.This deliberate use of repeated units of speech to make the text of expressivity or focusing the reader, the listener, at some particular moment.The closer their positions to each other, the more likely that the target of their notice.

The term «lexical repetition» has made it clear that in this case, the same units that appear many times in a row — this is the word.Use it only when the speaker wants only the use of a whole note the same token.When the concern of building repeat its organization, use terms that give a more precise characterization.This, for example, joint, epiphora, ring anaphora and many others.

And in a literary text and colloquial lexical repetition plays a huge role and performs several functions.

1. Transfer monotony of actions, their monotony.
2. Giving statement clarity, so that the presentation is no longer a vague, unclear.
3. lexical repetition contributes to the fact that the statement takes on greater emotional force, it grows and becomes more intense story.
4. Underlining, highlighting in his speech that a group of words that has a special meaning.
5. prolonged and repeated actions also help to express the lexical repetition.Examples of its use for that purpose is easy to find in the folklore.
6. Easing the transition from one topic to another statement.
7. repetition of identical units does offer more rhythmic, thus bringing it closer to the poem.
8. binding syntax in the text.This is due to a special rhythm, form the repetition of phrases or words.
9. slowdown story.This method is typical for the oral folk poetry.He did not just slow it, but also helps to give the song-tale character.

lexical repetition in the works of the classics — a tool that helps to make an expressive statement, link the phrase (in the chain) to sharpen the sense way to draw attention to the subtext.But in the book of the schoolboy, he often accepted teacher of speech errors.But is such a decision motivated?Using the lexical repetition in speech can not be justified in only two cases:

• when it is not used for communication phrases in the text;
• when he does not perform the function emphatic.

Only on this basis can be taken to use lexical repetition of the mistake, which shows that the student vocabulary is very limited and it is unable to find a suitable replacement word.

Repetition Definition

What is repetition? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Repetition is a literary device in which a word or phrase is repeated two or more times. Repetition occurs in so many different forms that it is usually not thought of as a single figure of speech. Instead, it’s more useful to think of repetition as being a category that covers a number of more specific figures of speech, all of which use repetition in different ways.

Some additional key details about repetition:

• Figures of speech that employ repetition usually repeat single words or short phrases, but some can involve the repetition of sounds while others might involve the repetition of entire sentences.
• Repeating information has been scientifically shown to increase the likelihood of changing people’s minds. The persuasive power of repetition is one of the reasons it is so common.

Repetition Pronunciation

Here’s how to pronounce repetition: rep-ih-tish-un

Figures of Speech that Use Repetition

There are many different figures of speech that use repetition, all in different ways. These figures of speech can vary in the things they repeat (sounds, words, phrases, etc.) as well as in the specific order in which the repeated words appear in clauses or sentences. The most common repetition figures of speech are:

• Alliteration: The repetition of the same sound in a group of words, such as the “b” sound in: “Bob brought the box of bricks to the basement.” The repeating sound must occur either in the first letter of each word, or in the stressed syllables of those words.
• Anadiplosis: Occurs when a word or group of words located at the end of one clause or sentence is repeated at or near the beginning of the following clause or sentence. This line from the novelist Henry James is an example of anadiplosis: «Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task.»
• Anaphora: The repetition of words at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences. For example, Martin Luther King’s famous «I Have a Dream» speech contains anaphora: «So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania…»
• Antanaclasis: A repetition of a word or phrase in which the that word or phrase means something different each time it appears. A famous example of antanaclasis is Benjamin Franklin’s statement that: «We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.»
• Antimetabole: The repetition of a phrase, but with the order of words reversed. John F. Kennedy’s words, «Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,» is a famous example of antimetabole.
• Assonance: The repetition of the same vowel sound within a group of words. An example of assonance is the repetition of the «oo» sound in: «Who gave Newt and Scooter the blue tuna? It was too soon!»
• Consonance: The repetition of the same consonant sound within a group of words. An example of consonance is the repetition of the «f» sound in: «Traffic figures to be tough on July Fourth.»
• Diacope: The repetition of a word or phrase with a small number of intervening words. The repetition of «unhappy» in the first line of Anna Karenina is an example of diacope, «Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,» is an example of diacope.
• Epanalepsis: Occurs when the beginning of a clause or sentence is repeated at the end of that same clause or sentence, with words intervening. The sentence «The king is dead, long live the king!» is an example of epanalepsis.
• Epistrophe: In epistrophe, one or more words repeat at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences. In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln urged the American people to ensure that, «government of the people, by the people, for the people,shall not perish from the earth.» His repetition of «the people» at the end of each clause is an example of epistrophe.
• Epizeuxis: The repetition of a word or phrase in immediate succession, with no words in between. When the character Kurtz in Heart of Darkness says, «The horror, the horror,» that’s an example of epizeuxis.
• Polysyndeton: Occurs when coordinating conjunctions—words such as «and,» «or,» and «but» that join other words or clauses in a sentence into relationships of equal importance—are used several times in close succession, particularly where conjunctions would normally not be present at all. For instance, the following sentence contains polysyndeton: «We ate roast beef and squash and biscuits and potatoes and corn and cheese and cherry pie.»
• Polyptoton: Occurs when words that share the same root, but are not identical, are repeated. The question, «Who shall watch the watchmen?» is an example of polyptoton.
• Refrain: In a poem or song, a refrain is a line or group of lines that regularly repeat, usually at the end of a stanza in a poem or at the end of a verse in a song. In a speech or other prose writing, a refrain can refer to any phrase that repeats a number of times within the text.

Repetition Examples

Here are additional examples from literature for each of the most common figures of speech that use repetition.

Repetition Example from Literature: Alliteration

This example from lines 5-6 of the Prologue of Romeo and Juliet has two sets of alliteration, one with “f” sounds and one with “l” sounds.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;

Repetition Example from Literature: Anadiplosis

In Lolita, the morally bankrupt Humbert Humbert defends his relationship to the young Lolita to an imagined jury. Here, he reveals that what he presented as another person’s letter was actually written by him, ostensibly from memory.

What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including that awful French.)

A tactic of his deceit involves convincing the jury of the improbable—that is, that he remembers a letter verbatim—and his use of anadiplosis as a persuasion tool reflects both his charming and incredibly slimy personality.

Repetition Example from Literature: Anaphora

In this short excerpt from The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses anaphora in a description of the apartment that Tom Buchanan keeps as a secret location for his extramarital affair. The anaphora emphasizes the smallness of this gaudy apartment, which also reflects the pettiness of the affair.

The apartment was on the top floor—a small living-room, a small dining-room, a small bedroom, and a bath.

Repetition Example from Literature: Antanaclasis

Shakespeare often used antanaclasis in his plays. For instance, in Act V of Henry V a character named Pistol promises to sneak off to England and there engage in crime:

To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal.

Repetition Example from Literature: Antimetabole

The dashing trio’s rallying cry in The Three Musketeers is a famous example of antimetabole. The saying has remained in circulation until today—in part because antimetabole makes it so memorable.

All for one and one for all!

Repetition Example from Literature: Assonance

In these lines from Book XII of Lattimore’s translation of Homer’s Iliad the assonance helps reinforce the lulling effect of the winds’ sleep:

«When Zeus …
stills the winds asleep in the solid drift …»

Repetition Example from Literature: Consonance

In this line from chapter 9 of Moby-Dick, the «s» and «h» sounds mirror the activity of the scene—singing—by making the prose musical.

Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high about the howling of the storm …

Repetition Example from Literature: Diacope

In Othello, just before he kills Desdemona in Act V, Othello utters this line that contains the repetition of diacope:

Put out the light, and then put out the light.

It’s worth noting that Othello’s line here is also an example of antanaclasis, as he is using «put out the light» to mean two different things.

Repetition Example from Literature: Epanalepsis

In this excerpt from a speech by Ralph Nader, the repetition of «minimum wage» underscores its role as a major concern in both his speech and his political priorities.

A minimum wage that is not a livable wage can never be a minimum wage.

Repetition Example from Literature: Epistrophe

In this example from Chapter 28 of the The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s use of epistrophe in Tom Joad’s farewell dialog with his mother emphasizes Joad’s desire both to provide her with some reassurance and continue to be there for her:

Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beaten’ up a guy, I’ll be there…I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folk eat the stuff they raise n’live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.

Joad’s repetition of his presence wherever poor people need help also emphasizes his dedication to the cause he believes in, and turns him into an almost mythological or godly presence who is always there to protect and support the downtrodden.

Repetition Example from Literature: Epizeuxis

One of the most famous examples of epizeuxis occurs in Hamlet, as Hamlet is speaking to (and mocking) Polonious in Act 2. When Polonius asks Hamlet what he’s reading, Hamlet responds:

Words, words, words.

Here Hamlet both mocks what he sees as the stupidity of Polonious’s question, but at the same time the repetition communicates a kind of awful weariness, in which Hamlet can’t bring himself to care about the meaning of the words.

Repetition Example from Literature: Polysyndeton

Bob Dylan won the nobel prize for literature for the genius of his lyrics. His song «Masters of War» shows how polysyndeton can be used to build a specific emotion:

«And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead»

Anger and disgust are palpable in the final lines of this song of protest against the politicians behind the Vietnam War. By using polysyndeton, Dylan continues to add phrase after phrase, far beyond where listeners might expect him to stop, to fully communicate the depth of his fury and his hatred for the politicians he calls the «masters of war.»

Repetition Example from Literature: Polyptoton

In Shakespeare’s play Troilus and Cressida, the character Troilus uses polyptoton three times in two lines. In all three cases, the repetition emphasizes the might of the Greeks:

The Greeks are strong and skillful to their strength,
Fierce to their skill and to their fierceness valiant;

Repetition Example from Literature: Refrain

These are the first two stanzas of a song from Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night. This poem actually contains a «double refrain,» because it has two lines that repeat as refrains in each stanza.

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man’s estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.

Why Do Writers Use Repetition?

Given the large number of figures of speech that use repetition, it stands to reason that writers use repetition for all sorts of different reasons. That said, it’s possible to describe some general reasons that writers might choose to use repetition:

• Emphasis: The repetition of a word or phrase naturally serves to highlight it’s importance within a text and as a thing or idea.
• Persuasion: Scientific studies have shown that simply repeating something is one of the most effective ways to convince people of its truth. Figures of speech that use repetition are common in speeches for just this reason.
• Contrast: Sometimes by repeating the same thing in slightly different contexts it is possible to illuminate contrasts. For instance, in the sentence, «What you own ends up owning you,» the repetition of «own» highlights the contrast or twist in the sentence, which argues that the things you buy to improve your life can end up limiting and influencing your life choices.
• Rhythm: Repetition creates a natural rhythm, like beats of a drum, within a sentence. Repetition, then, is not just valuable for how it can allow a writer to control the meaning of sentences. It also can help a writer to affect the feel of those sentences.

Other Helpful Repetition Resources

• Wikipedia entry on repetition: A pretty basic discussion of repetition as a device.
• Youtube video on repetition: This video covers the basics of repetition.