Lexical Redundancy: An Effective Tool for Efficient Communication

This paper studies the relevance of lexical redundancy in assisting communication held within a noisy environment. Redundancy is a concept that is usually frowned at in the communication cycle and the use of English. Though it is frowned at, it is a unique feature of the English language. The data for the study were extracted from former President Olusegun Obasanjo's 1990 autobiography “Not My Will”. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik's 1985 theory of reduction which entails ellipsis and substitution was adopted for this study. To enable a sufficient source of “noise”, the reading of the text was carried out at Ahmadu Bello Way, Jos, Plateau State during core hours of activities around the market. The study highlights the relevance of redundancy to the communication cycle and the linking of core information that is presented with the use of the English language throughout the text. It further shows that distinct features such as repetition were preponderantly used in the text for the purpose of emphasis. The paper concludes that Redundancy is a core feature of communication and language use and it aids contextualization across discourse.