In literary criticism and rhetoric, a tautology is a statement that repeats an idea using near-synonymous morphemes, words or phrases, effectively "saying the same thing twice".[1][2] Tautology and pleonasm are not consistently differentiated in literature.[3] Like pleonasm, tautology is often considered a fault of style when unintentional. Intentional repetition may emphasize a thought or help the listener or reader understand a point.[4] Sometimes logical tautologies like "Boys will be boys" are conflated with language tautologies, but a language tautology is not inherently true, while a logical tautology always is.[4]
The word was coined in Koine Greek from ταὐτός ('the same') plus λόγος ('word' or 'idea'), and transmitted through 3rd-century Latin tautologia and French tautologie. It first appeared in English in the 16th century. The use of the term logical tautology was introduced in English by Wittgenstein in 1919, perhaps following Auguste Comte's usage in 1835.[5]
Tautological initialisms redundantly repeat the final word of an abbreviation. Examples include "RAS syndrome", "CD disc", "ATM machine", "PIN number", and "HIV virus".[6] Tautological phrases include "new innovation", "hot water heater", "evening sunset", "short summary", "predictions about the future", "close proximity", and "necessary requirement".[7]
The use of tautologies is usually unintentional. For example, the phrases "mental telepathy", "planned conspiracies", and "small dwarfs" imply that there are such things as physical telepathy, spontaneous conspiracies, and giant dwarfs, which are oxymorons.[8] Parallelism is not tautology, but rather a particular stylistic device. Much Old Testament poetry is based on parallelism: the same thing said twice, but in slightly different ways. H. W. Fowler describes this as pleonasm.[1]
See also
- Bilingual tautological expressions – Redundancy in linguistic expression
- Figure of speech – Literary technique used to persuade
- Grammar – Structural rules of a language
- Hyperbole – Rhetorical device
- Lapalissade – Obvious and comical truism
- No true Scotsman – Informal logical fallacy
- Platitude – Trite, prosaic, or cliché truism
- Redundancy (linguistics) – Information that is expressed more than once
- Tautophrase – Repetition of an idea in the same words
- List of tautological place names – Toponyms composed of synonyms
References
- 1 2 Fowler, Henry Watson (1 April 1983). Gowers, Sir Ernest (ed.). Modern English Usage (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-281389-3.
- ↑ Bryson, Bill (29 July 1999). The Mother Tongue: The English Language. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-014305-8.
- ↑ Szymanek, Bogdan (2015). "Remarks on Tautology in Word-Formation". In Bauer, Laurie; Körtvélyessy, Lívia; Štekauer, Pavol (eds.). Semantics of Complex Words. Studies in Morphology. Vol. 3. pp. 143–161. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-14102-2_8. ISBN 978-3319141022.
- 1 2 Bascom, John (1866). Philosophy of Rhetoric. Boston, Crosby and Ainsworth. p. 241. OL 1853537W – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ "Home : Oxford English Dictionary". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). 2014.
- ↑ "Tautology Examples In Acronyms And Daily Usage". classnotes. 1 March 2019.
- ↑ "Examples of Tautology: Meaning and Common Forms". yourdictionary.
- ↑ Kallan, Richard (2005). Armed Gunmen, True Facts, and Other Ridiculous Nonsense: A Compiled Compendium of Repetitive Redundancies. Pantheon Books. p. x. ISBN 978-0-375-42352-9.