Repetition and reiteration in oral questions in the Andalusian Parliament

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the use of repetition and reiteration as communicative strategies in Oral Questions in the Andalusian Parliament. The corpus was made up of 12 oral questions (from March to September 2010) raised by the two main political parties at the “Comisión de Igualdad y Bienestar Social” (ie. Committee of Equality and Social Welfare). The study was designed to identify: 1) the most relevant functions of repetition and reiteration; 2) differences between the two main political parties in the use of the above mentioned discursive strategies; 3) gender differences in the use of repetition and reiteration. Some of the devices studied in this paper are: anaphora, epistrophe, anadiplosis, epanalepsis, amplification, scesis onomaton, polysyndeton, hyperonymy, holonymy, synonymy, oppositness.