Topic and research questions
Repetition in language is a riddle: On the one hand, it increases redundancy and thus helps the message to come across, on the other hand, it is costly for the speaker and contradicts the overall goal of an efficient encoding process. From a structuralist point of view, it is incompatible with a conception of language as a consistent system with all (meaningful) elements standing in functional opposition to each other. Doubling phenomena are, however frequent in the languages of the world, at least at the level of observation (e.g. Spanish: Le doy un libro a María, her.DAT-give1.SG. a book to Mary-DAT, ‘I give a book to Mary’), and repetition may serve various functions in interactionists accounts of language use. In interaction, we often refer back to central aspects of the message of our interlocutors to confirm understanding. Repetition is one possibile way of doing so, and we may either use our own linguistic form or take over (features of) the form used by our interlocutor. In this second case, repetition of foreign forms is part of an accommodation process that can change the individual's repertoire, his/her personal language use and, when it spreads within the community, it may even result in language change.
Keeping this in mind, the workshop intends to have a closer look at repetition phenomena in language use, with a (however not exclusive) focus on mobile written communication such as WhatsApp messages, in order to identify various functions of patterns of repetition.
Guiding questions of the discussion are:
What is doubled or repeated (features, forms, chunks, sentences)? How can linguistic theory account for repetition, and what does it tell us about language structure? Which aspects of repetition are central in interaction? Are there triggers for a repetition of foreign forms? How does repetition influence changes to an individual’s language use?
