Lexical Repetition in Text: A Study of the Text-Organizing Function of Lexical Repetition in Foreign Language Argumentative Discourse (Metalinguistica)

This book explores lexical repetition and its text-organizing function in English written discourse. It intends to contribute to three main areas of study. It contributes to cohesion analysis by showing that by treating the concept of repetition in a new, broader sense, lexical cohesion as a whole may be seen in fact as various forms of lexical repetition. It also contributes to repetition research, because it demonstrates that lexical repetition and the way it clusters in text make a unique contribution to the organizational quality of written discourse. Finally, it contributes to English written text analysis in that it partly answers a question that has long been bedeviling the science of text: whether or not there exists a way to «measure» subjective intuition objectively. This study shows that there is a way to measure subjective/intuitive perceptions of discourse quality via objective means, that is, through the analysis of linguistic elements identifiable on the textual surface.