Repetitious conversations

[Robert Lawless]

Are there studies of repetition in informal conversations? Early Saturday 
afternoon I had the occasion to be with a group of five for a couple of 
hours. One of the topics of conversation was the theft of a Boy Scout 
trailer from a church parking lot. The story was told four times, twice by 
two different people. The group of five didn't change during the two hours 
and the four stories were not really versions, since there was no 
controversy about the facts of the story. During the first telling of the 
story another member of the group said, "I read about it. It made me sooo 
mad!" After she had said this twice during the first telling, I kept a 
mental count of how many times she repeated this phrase. Sixteen times. She 
repeated the phrase regularly, four time during each of the four tellings. 
Yet another member of the group told his story about the lack of customer 
service at the local Home Depot. He told this story in more or less the 
same words three times during the two hours. Later in the afternoon in a 
different setting with just the two of us, he repeated the story to me. Any 
comments or insights into this behavior? Robert.