Recently, in an English class, I had to write a short essay identifying rhetorical devices in a song of my choice. When scanning the lyrics for analysis I noticed how many repeated phrases there were. When I later read Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students I was reminded of the role of repetition in song again.
When it comes to writing I often have a fear of sounding repetitive because I think it would make my work boring and predictable. I also end up second guessing and backtracking so much during the writing process that it makes it even harder to distinguish if my work is genuinely repetitive or if I’m just tired. However, when I reviewed the previously mentioned article, mainly the fifth metaphor Shelley Reid discussed; “Pink Houses & Choruses: Keeping Your Reader With You”, I realized that repetition may not be such a bad thing.
Reid reminds us that reminding your audience of your thesis throughout the text can actually be a good way to maintain your audience’s attention. It can also improve audience retention the same way a song’s chorus can. Which brings me back again to my song assignment. The most repetition in the song comes from the chorus and it reappears a total of three times throughout: first it appears after the first verse, again after the second verse, and finally it’s spliced in between lines of the outro. Reid mentions that the familiarity of a chorus is a clever way songwriters can get an audience to follow along from verse to verse– a method that the song I listened to certainly utilized. Reid argues that you can use your thesis to do the same thing. This metaphor really helped me understand not only how repetition can serve as a useful writing technique but also possesses the ability to get your audience on the same page as you via the power of familiarity.
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