REPETITION

REPETITION. Doing, saying, or writing the same thing more than once. The recurrence of processes, structures, elements, and motifs is fundamental to communication in general and language in particular. Such repetition occurs at all levels, starting with rhythm. The distinctive RHYTHM of English derives from recurring syllabic stresses: If whát/ you sáy/ is trúe/ I'd bétt/er gó. Poetry intensifies such rhythms, iambic pentameter in particular formalizing the stress-timed rhythm of English: ‘While thús/ I stóod,/ intént/ to sée/ and héar,/ One cáme,/ methóught,/ and whís/per'd ín/ my éar’ (Pope, 1715). In addition, the repetition of shared sounds creates rhyme. These lines of Pope's have the rhyme pattern aabb: hear/ear, raise/praise. The use of poetic and rhetorical devices such as ALLITERATION and ASSONANCE produces repetition of sounds and letters and other effects, as in the jingle-like:
Nature, it seems, is the popular name for milliards and milliards and milliards of particles playing their infinite game of billiards and billiards and billiards( Piet Hein , Grooks, 1966)
Similarly, syntactic and rhetorical repetition can produce emphatic or climactic effects:Lord Wilson's memoirs are not as dull as
Lord Stockton's, nor as sad as Lord
Avon's, nor as queer as Lord Bradwell's
, but Lord! they are as worthless as any of them
(Independent, 21 Oct. 1986)
.

See ANADIPLOSIS, ANAPHORA, PARALLELISM, REDUPLICATION, TAUTOLOGY.