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2021: Creating a Lexicon of Future
T is for Tautology
A tautology is an expression or phrase that says the same thing twice, just in a different way. For this reason, tautology is usually undesirable, as it can make you sound wordier than you need to be and make you appear foolish. Occasionally, tautology can help to add emphasis or clarity or introduce intentional ambiguity. But, in most cases, it’s best to choose just one way to state your meaning and eliminate the extra verbiage. ~ Your Dictionary
Tautologies give vigor, intensity, and emphasis to our communication. They reduce ambiguity and enhance clarity, a reason lawyers love tautologies. Tautologies are particularly helpful in speech. If I say, for instance, “what is your PIN (personal identification number),” I can be misunderstood or misheard as saying, “Where is your pin (a sharp object that pokes)?” But if I say “PIN number” (which technically repeats “number” since the “n” in PIN stands for “number”), my hearer would be in no doubt about what I mean.
In defense of tautologies in speech, a linguist said the following in an online forum: “Those who have studied information theory will immediately realize that redundancy is very useful for error-correction. This is what phonology achieves. A lot of redundancies are imposed by phonotactic constraints (these constraints determine which sounds can occur where in a language, and whether they can occur at all). The redundancy in phonological representations acts as a safe-guard and reduces the probability that a sloppy or poorly-heard/noisy production is perceived as an unintended word.” ~ In Defense of Tautology in English
