The Possibility of Paraphrase

Abstract

It is often claimed that, in at least some areas of language use, the relation between form and content is such that any attempt at reformulation or paraphrase amounts to a distortion of the significance of the original wording. In this article, I set out to vindicate an undemanding yet nontrivial conception of paraphrase. According to the rhetorical relations account of textual cohesion proposed, the meaning specifications required by a collection of sentences in order to constitute a text pave the way for a kind of reformulation which is in solidarity with the possibility of paraphrase. I substantiate my approach with prosaic and poetic examples from Woolf and Dickinson, respectively.