The Influence of Contexts and Orientations on Interlocutors’ Choices of Concept Reiterations

Abstract

This research investigates whether there are relationships between the choices of concept reiterations and interlocutors’ orientations, between the choices of concept reiterations and contexts of communication, and between affective connotations of paraphrase, interlocutors’ orientations and contexts of communication. The data were collected from four different contexts, namely, the Hotel, Forum, Court, and Debate corpora. The results suggested no clear relationship between interlocutors’ orientations and the choices of concept reiterations but the contexts of communication were likely to influence choices of reiterations, especially in the use of repetitions and the purposeful shift of paraphrase connotations to achieve the professional goals of communication in the Hotel and Court corpora which are the contexts where interlocutors are bound by their social roles.