Wir sind, wir sind zur Stelle – Die Syntax, Semantik und Pragmatik rhetorischer Wiederholungsfiguren: Anadiplose und Geminatio in Gedichten
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21248/idsopen.4.2022.7Keywords:
adjective semantics, anadiplosis, apposition, coordination, deviation theory, gemination, hypotaxis, iconicity, illocution, implicature, left dislocation, poetry, repetition, rhetorical figures, speech act, adjective semantics, anadiplosis, apposition, coordination, deviation theory, geminationAbstract
Lexical repetitions figure prominently in the study of rhetorical figures, but they hardly play a role in the linguistics of written German. This paper examines the extent to which the functioning of two figures of mostly immediate repetition, gemination and anadiplosis, can be explained on the basis of standard assumptions about the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of German.
The work is based on a collection of over 700 instances of gemination and anadiplosis from German-language poems from the 17th to the 21st century. It is shown how gemination serves as an iconic expression of the gradation of properties by exploiting sentence-topological and NP-internal positions and compositional semantic and implicature-based pragmatic processes of meaning constitution. Anadiplosis, in turn, emerges as a means of highlighting themes and propositions that is pragmatically and information structurally based on its incorporation into dislocation constructions and sentence linkage.
Thus, the two rhetorical figures hardly provide arguments for the deviation theory of literary language, according to which the use of language in literary and especially poetic texts often does not follow the rules and usages of non-literary German. The functioning of gemination and anadiplosis is well integrated into the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic system of German. Gemination in particular shows clear parallels to corresponding phenomena in spoken German.
