Unnecessary repetition of "is" in spoken English

Question

Over the past few years I have often heard people repeat the word "is" unnecessarily, for example, "My concern is, is that by going backwards we will throw a spanner in the works and that momentum will be halted." (Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Schools, Radio 4 Today Programme, 9th September 2016.)

Sometimes, as in the above example, there is a discernible pause between the two words, and sometimes there is none.

Has this phenomenon been remarked upon and does it have a name? If not, may I suggest "isisism".

Crutch words comes to minds - http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/198646/what-are-crutch-words — mplungjan, Sep 09 '16 at 06:59
One approach: http://web.stanford.edu/~clark/1990s/Clark.Wasow.98.pdf — MetaEd, Sep 09 '16 at 07:20
Language Log has a number of posts where they call this phenomenon "isis": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4338 — herisson, Jun 11 '17 at 00:18

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 09 '16 at 07:48

0

Maybe it's just a hesitation. We are thinking while we are talking, sometimes we need a pause to think it over, when we start again, we repeat the last word.

answered Sep 09 '16 at 07:48

selina

3

I'm sure that's often the case, but I've also heard it said with no hesitation at all, with the speaker seemingly unaware of the repetition, for example, "The answer is is that it's not worth the money.". Perhaps because "is" is such a small word there's an unconscious compulsion to give it more weight by repeating it. – R. Saunders Sep 10 '16 at 13:48

Unnecessary repetition of "is" in spoken English

1 Answers1