The term “repetition compulsion” is associated with Freud and his theory of psychopathic behavior and is defined in Wikipedia as “a psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats an event or its circumstances over and over again.” When applied to language use, the term includes verbal tics (phenomena detailed several times before herein). For example, Jacobus Primus invariably begins every conversation over Skype with Y-H-B by saying “What’s cooking?” Such quasi-meaningless repetition is, of course, typical of the beginning of a conversation, when one of the interlocutors simply wishes to essay a variation on openings such as “How are you?”
In large part, the compulsion to repeat oneself linguistically can be classed with anosognosia, defined as a “deficit of self-awareness, a condition in which a person with a disability seems unaware of its existence.” This is a stylistic deficit, resulting not only from a lack of self-awareness but a quasi-pathological reliance on habit where a whole panoply of variants exist in the language and could easily be implemented. To a certain extent, this deficit is concomitant with the advent of the digital revolution and the sway of social media. Clichés of all kinds are definitely in the ascendant in contemporary American English speech, much to the detriment of intelligent conversation.
MICHAEL SHAPIRO
FYSMI (funny you should mention it), I’ve been noticing a rise of late in Dunning–Kruger Nominalism. This has been especially disconcerting to see prevailing in the Peirce community, where you’d think people would gnosis better.