Pleonasm and tautology: Stylistic ornament or stylistic error in expression skills of the young

Abstract

This paper considers the use of pleonastic and tautologous phrases in written expression of secondary school students from linguo-stylistic perspective. The aim of the analysis was directed to determining the types of the two figures of speech most commonly used by secondary school students in their school essays and whether the value of these structures is stylogenetic. The corpus included school written assignments on any topic or any lit- erature-based topics (1061 school written assignments) of secondary school students (587 students) who attend the third and the fourth grade of high schools and secondary vocational schools in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Jagodina and Krusevac. The basic criterion, already applied in the selection of the material, was normative. The sub-criteria were related to stylematic and stylogenetic procedures. The results of the analysis have indicated that the most common structures are diminutive pleonastic phrases, then pleonastic phrases with an attributive, while the pleonasms in the form of verb-object and verb-adverbial phrases are less frequently used by secondary school students. We may also note that three types of tautologous structures are present in the written assignments: 1) tautology in the form of a coordinated phrase with a conjunction and, 2) tautology in the form of explicative sentences with the conjunction respectively and 3) tautology in the form of asyndetic coordinated structures. In addition, most pleonastic and tautologous structures of the analyzed corpus are not stylistically effective.

U radu se iz lingvostilističke perspektive razmatra upotreba pleonastičkih i tautoloških konstrukcija u pismenom izražavanju srednjoškolaca. Cilj analize školskih pismenih zadataka usmeren je na to da ustanovimo koje tipove dveju stilskih figura učenici najčešće upotrebljavaju u svojim školskim sastavima i da li je vrednost pomenutih konstrukcija stilogena. Korpus čine školski pismeni zadaci na slobodnu temu ili sa tematikom iz oblasti književnosti (1061 školski pismeni zadatak) srednjoškolaca (587 učenika) koji pohađaju III i IV razred gimnazija i srednjih stručnih škola u Beogradu, Novom Sadu, Jagodini i Kruševcu. Osnovni kriterijum primenjen već u selekciji građe jeste normativni. Potkriterijumi se tiču stilematičkih i stilogenih postupaka. Rezultati analize pokazuje da su najzastupljenije deminutivne pleonastičke konstrukcije, potom pleonastičke sintagme s atributivom, dok su srednjoškolci najređe upotrebljavali pleonazme koji su izraženi u formi glagolsko-objekatske ili glagolsko-priloškoodredbene sintagme. Takođe, u školskim sastavima se izdvajaju tri tipa tautoloških konstrukcija: 1) tautologija u formi koordinirane sintagme s veznikom i; 2) tautologija u formi eksplikativnih rečenica s veznikom odnosno i 3) tautologija u formi asindetskih koordiniranih konstrukcija.