Pleonazm jako reduplikacja semantyczna we współczesnym języku niemieckim

The present paper discusses diverse aspects of pleonasms in different types of German discourses. Pleonasm, similarly to tautology, is a strongly criticised phenomenon, not only by regular language users, but also by linguists, especially lexicographers. It does not change the fact, that it is widely used in different discourse types, especially in spoken and technical ones. It appears also on different levels of the language structure. It occurs that it is a mechanism of the language use and it should not be treated a priori as a mistake, because it is a specific language universal, present in different languages around the world.