Repetition and paraphrase in contexts of concordant and discordant orientations

Language processing theory posits that a person chooses words based on
how he/she conceptualizes the referent. Where there are two or more inter-
locutors, depending on the way they conceptualize the referent, their word
choices may be the same or different. In an unpublished paper, Sinclair
claims that when interlocutors are in concordance, they are likely to repeat
the word choices of their partners; when they are in discordance, they are
likely to use paraphrases. This article investigates this claim by examining
whether there is a relationship between two types of reiteration of concepts
(repetition and paraphrase) and interlocutors’ orientations (concordant and
discordant). 100 hotel reviews and responses posted on TripAdvisor were
collected to form two corpora representing the two contexts. The data was
analyzed quantitatively to obtain comparative frequencies of repetition and
paraphrase in each context, and connotations of paraphrases were identified
to see whether there is any association between the types of connotations
and interlocutors’ orientations. The results stand in contrast to Sinclair’s
claim. More specifically, paraphrase outnumbers repetition in both con-
texts, and repetition is more preferred in discordant contexts. Affective con-
notations are more common in the reviews where the hotels are rated
“terrible” and the reviewers and the respondents show opposing views on
the concepts.