Pleonasm is a special turn of speech in which a certain element of meaning is duplicated. In other words, an expression can have several language forms with the same meaning. This phenomenon can be present both in a complete segment of text or speech, and in the linguistic expression itself.
Pleonasm, examples of which can be found in everyday speech, is the realization of a tendency to redundant message, which in turn helps to overcome obstacles that prevent the correct understanding of the message (for example, communicative noise). In addition to preventing the negative impact of interference, pleonasm is a means of stylistic design of a message and a stylistic device of poetic speech. Sometimes it is a linguistic anomaly, when redundancy competes with the economy of language resources. Such pleonasm is called tautology and indicates the low semantic and stylistic competence of the speaker. For example: a guard is one who guards, and guarding is the occupation of guards.
In its structure, pleonasm (examples clearly show this)is a duplication of a content plan unit, carried out by repeating a certain unit of the expression plan (reduplication, tautology) or using units with a similar meaning (verbosity, synonymic repetition). It is contrasted with a contraction of the content plan - an ellipsis, a default, or a break. Often pleonasm is called reduplication - the repetition of a word or morpheme, which is a means of form and word formation.
Pleonasm is divided into a mandatory, stable turn of speech, due to the language system, and optional, not due to it. In turn, facultative pleonasms are divided into conventional (assigned to the norm of the language) and non-conventional (created spontaneously by the speaker or writer).
If we talk about the concept of "mandatory pleonasm", examples of it are already present in the grammatical system. They are a repetition of certain grammatical meanings in endings:
- agreement of adjective and noun endings: red house;
- repetition of the grammatical meanings of a preposition or verb prefix: enter the room;
- grammatical structures with double negation: no one called.
Conventional facultative pleonasms include fixed turns and expressions that are often found in colloquial speech. These include, for example, such expressions as “go down”, “heard with my own ears”, “dream in a dream”, “paths-roads” and many others. Frequent to this groupinclude such combinations as “full-full”, “visibly-invisibly”, “darkness-darkness”. In addition, combinations with single-root verbs and nouns can be included here: “to tell a fairy tale”, “to grieve grief”, “to live life”.
Unconventional optional pleonasm (examples: "remember in the head", "speak with the mouth", etc.) is used to create a certain stylistic effect. This is a trope often found in poetic speech.
In cases where pleonasm is not part of the language system and is not created specifically for artistic expression, its use is considered a stylistic error and is condemned. The abundance of pleonasm is a feature of the conversation of a poorly educated person, which occurs as a result of insufficient command of the means of the language or poverty of the vocabulary.
