Some Common Repetitions in Pantun

Abstract

Instead of making it boring and monotonous, repetition in the pantun can heighten its emotional impact. So important that repetition plays this that it has been successfully used in creating expectation, enforcing a point and arousing a sense of completeness, satisfaction, and fulfilment which a listener in oral tradition might miss otherwise if it had not been grounded into his or her head so firmly by the continuously repeating a single sound, syllable, word or phrase. When a sound, a word, a syllable and phrase is repeated, what was first pleasurable arouses anxiety and a feeling of normality, especially when the repetition emerges from an encounter or an experience where it was least expected. Hence, in the pantun, repetition never loses its charm in the modern days as in the past, but gains emphasis when spoken, recited and heard. This is the focus of the paper.