Extra Glosses of Words or Phrases Are Not Always Redundant
Or How Can Writers Balance Between Repeating Themselves Unnecessarily and Better Zooming In On the Impenetrable?
In the English language(as well as the thousands of other languages) it is so easy to use terms or phrases that are redundant. Here are some examples.
“My head feels hot to the touch.”
Well, by what other sense would you feel heat? Not by taste!
“I am facing a very difficult dilemma.”
Umm, dilemmas are difficult by nature. Maybe if you say “this dilemma is more difficult than most?”
“I have a positive and optimistic attitude.”
Well, optimism is a positive attitude.
I will enter in.
Hmm, you could say enter but enter in is redundant.
But not all English words or phrases(or words or phrases in any other language) that appear redundant are necessarily so. Many times, those extra words bring additional meaning. Yes, we live in a world where succinctness matters. But before you cut out those excessive strings of words, make sure you will not take away any conveyed extra riches, subtleties, or complexities. Here are a few examples you can consider.
Glossing Over Forever or Infinity
Do you ever feel confused by phrases such as “forever and ever” or “forever and always?” These phrases may be common in spiritual or religious settings, popular songs, or everyday speech. If editing, you may feel the need to cut out the excessive phrases in sentences like “I waited forever and ever to return” or “this will take forever and a day.” But before you do, are you sure the phrase is not capturing a profound truth about the actual nature of these conditions? There can be more than one forever or infinity.
19th century mathematician Georg Cantor was one of the main luminaries to explore the incomprehensibility of infinity. His work analyzed the nature of infinite sets and even verified they can be of different sizes! To use an example then from mathematics, take two irrational numbers like say, the square root of 2 and pi. You would be technically correct to say it would take a computer, person, or other being forever and ever to calculate all of the digits of each of those two irrational numbers(each one a distinct infinity of non-repeating digits). Carry this over to the countless other linguistic uses of these terms and you can see how redundancy is next to impossible. At the same time, however, forever still at least begins to get the point across.
Beyond When There Seems To Be No Beyond
“I am way beyond bewildered.” I once told my college friend.
“How can you be beyond bewildered?” my friend asked. True, bewildered does literally mean utterly confused or perplexed. So yes, in one sense this is redundant.
But just this one phrase is not in short supply when doing an exact phrase Google search. This CNN article even mentions how comedy host Seth Meyers was “beyond bewildered” by a certain former U.S. president’s press conference remarks. Perhaps so many experiences or realities leave us “beyond” even the “utmost levels” of a certain feeling or condition. So, we may often need to shy away from erasing the “beyond” as an unnecessary filler word. On the other hand, we can easily get carried away with rhetorical devices such as these to the point where they become meaningless. Are you triple-beyond dismayed? How about quadruple-beyond-disgruntled? Yeah, you get the point.
How Might We Recraft Words and Language?
The English language — or any other for that matter — hardly contains even a fraction of all possible words. And let’s face it, so many words and their corresponding concepts or impressions do not even translate well between languages. For instance, German has countless such words like Fernweh (the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else) or Kummerspeck (weight gained from emotional eating). Whole unbounded worlds exist between the words developed in languages and the concepts, perceptions, or impressions they point to. Additionally, the words, concepts, or impressions hardly ever begin to capture the unboundedly complex realities beyond them.
How do you fully utilize language to better elaborate on concepts, impressions, and experiences to shed more light on any reality beyond? How do you avoid misusing language in a matter where it falls into redundancy and unnecessary ambiguity? This all requires a certain balancing act. One strategy is definitely the rigorous revision and even second revision of work. How might phrases be better worded? How might whole passages be reiterated with fewer words? How might unique, unconsidered words be added in other places?
And let’s not forget so much of this careful crafting of language has to do with the writer’s audience. So much of writing is painting a picture with words. One can paint a beautiful picture of a whole countryside meadow showered with wildflowers without capturing the stems, petals, leaves, and contrasting colors of each one. Perusers know there are whole worlds never to be considered there. But if the painter wants to show the special significance of a few wildflowers in the work’s far left corner, extra colors, layers, and textures can certainly extenuate some intricaces otherwise left hidden.
Certainly, this is a fine balancing act. Thank goodness for the writing process. The writing process allows for a journey to be taken for any draft or piece one composes. Writers are able to get thoughts, perceptions, insights, and viewpoints down before they redraft, edit, proofread, and rewrite. The journey of every piece may take writers through a slightly different path. Along fresh pathways, some weeds of redundancy may need to be pulled while other small blossoming sprouts must be pruned and nourished so that they grow only a little towards what is ultimately impenetrable and inexpressible.
