The relevance of reformulations

Abstract

Some of the phenomena in this paper are traditionally classified as loose appositions. This classification is shown to be too restrictive to provide an explanatory analysis of all cases of reformulation in discourse. Following Sperber and Wilson's (1986) suggestion that style arises out of the pursuit of optimal relevance, it is argued that deliberate reformulations are a stylistic device designed to achieve particular contextual effects. The analysis of a range of both literary and non-literary examples shows that there is a variety of ways in which a reformulation may achieve relevance. In a technical text a reformulation may constrain the interpretation of the original for the purpose of ensuring a more accurate understanding of a particular concept and hence a greater understanding of the surrounding text. In other cases the hearer is rewarded by an array of weak implicatures, in which case we may say the reformulation achieves poetic effects comparable with those achieved through repetition.