Epanadiplosis is a common,probably,universal rhetorical phenomenon in daily verbal commu - nication.It often occurs
in a context wherein someone(usu.the hearer)has confused one type of thing or person with another,which in actuality may or may have led to improper behavior or other undesirable consequences.Confronted with the target audience's confusion and possible misconduct,the utterer of the apparently tautological utterance resorts to such ways of speaking to achieve two major purposes.On one hand,the speaker intends it as a way of influencing the hearer by activating particular encyclopedic information in his or her cognitive environment and making manifest its rel - evance to some thought or act presupposed by the situational context.It is expected that the hearer,when reminded of or brought to understand the basic distinction between the blurred things or peo - ple,will change his mind and act.On the other hand,the speaker intends it as a strategic way of achieving that purpose.It is strategic because the speaker does all this indirectly,i.e.,by conveying some weak implicatures.By marginally making manifest a set of commonsensical assumptions in - stead of directly imposing them on the hearer,the speaker can add to the power of his or her per - suasion primarily by virtue of protecting the hearer ' s face.Furthermore,the rhetoric of this particu - lar way of speaking is built on repetition that yields emphasis.The repetition is special in that what is repeated is a generic concept,which leads to a repetition of some supposedly shared assumptions.In a nutshell,both the comprehension of its implied message and the explanation of its rhetori - cal effects can be accounted for in the light of the Relevance Theory.Previous attempts based on Gricean Cooperative Principle are only partially helpful to the extent that they enable us to identify the flouting of the quantity maxim and the triggering of a conversational implicature,yet none of these earlier accounts have further explained,nor can they,why and how the
rhetorical device comes into being and effect.The basic flaw in these studies lies in the fact that they take for grant - ed the participation and selection of background knowledge in utterance interpretation.By contrast,our RT-theoretical account provides a procedural picture of how context selection and manifestness in
epanadiplosis comprehension guided by the presumption of optimal relevance builds up its special communicative effects.