常言说:“谎言重复一千遍就变成真理"。在某种程度上 ,这句话说明了语言刻意的重复,会造成强烈的修辞效果。
在英语阅读中经常碰到这种刻意的重复。它有点像中文里的排比句,却更随意和多元。它不仅仅是语汇的重复,还可以是语法结构的重复。从语法结构上看,这种重复几乎可以发生在任何部分。
主语的重复:
He could open a can of paint. He could mix paint, thin paint, remove paint. He could chop wood and measure things with a ruler. He knew how to build fires. He could dig holes, and he had a real gift for bringing water for them both in cans and canteens from the tanks near the mess hall. He could engross himself in an inconsequential task for hoyurs without growing restless or bored, as oblivious to fatigue as the stump of a tree, and almost as tacitum.
宾语的重复:
下面这个句子中,一个动词后面连续带有9个不同的词汇作为宾语:
Every man suddenly became related to Kino’s pearl, and Kino’s pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became every man’s enemy.
类似的宾语重复:
As a soldier who had qualified for aviation cadet training, he had weeks and weeks of wanting for assignment to a class, weeks and weeks more to become a bombardier-navigator, weeks and weeks more of operational training after that to prepare him for overseas duty.
下面的句子则是作为定语的介词短语和作为补语的形容词的重复:
That means listening to music of all schools and all periods, old and new, conservative and modern.
还可以在同一段落中出现不同结构的重复:
Works indeed of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come under no rule; a university is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts.
介词短语的重复:
To the average American, such life events as death of spouse, death of close family members, dismissal from work, change to different line of work and change in number of arguments with spouse can cause greater stress on the part of those people involved in the United States than on those from other countries.
动宾结构的重复:
Hungary Joe ate voraciously, gnawed incessantly at the tips of his fingers, stammered, choked, itched, sweated, salivated, and sprang from spot to spot fanatically with an intricate black camera with which he was always trying to take pictures of naked cirls.
不定式短语too...to...结构的重复:
They were lovely, satisfying, maddening manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure too powerful to be measured, too keen to be endured, and too exquisite to be intended for employment by base, unworthy man.
状语+定语的重复:
He was a very serious, very earnest and very conscientious dope.
还有完整的近似句子的重复:
Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
状语从句的重复:
When he turned to his teammates, he encountered a reef of curious reflective faces all gazing at him woodenly with morose and inscrutable animosity. He shivered with shame. When the game resumed, it was not good any longer. When he dribbled, no one tried to stop him; when he called for a pass, whoever had the ball passed it; and when he missed basket, no one raced him for the rebound.
混合重复:
He wondered often how he would ever recognize the first chill, flush, twinge, ache, belch, sneeze, stain, lethargy, vocal slip, loss of balance or lapse of memory that would signal the inevitable beginning of the inevitable end.
无论是哪一种结构的重复,都达到一种强调,加重语气,引起关注的语言效果。阅读者可以感到一种明显的语言张力扑面而来。
如此看来,不一定要重复一千遍,谎言才变成真理。只消重复十来八次,任何语言都会变成真理!