Tautology

Tautology is the unnecessary repetition of some words. (Well, I'll admit that that sentence might itself be regarded as tautologous − repetition is probably always unnecessary!)

A classic example is 'free gift' − gifts are always free. But that doesn't stop the phrase being used rather often.

It seems to me that Malay tolerates tautology a bit more than English, perhaps as a rhetorical device to achieve emphasis. For example, in the Media Permata (1 May 2009, p. 5), I saw:

semangat patriotik dan cintakan negara
  spirit     patriotic   and   love     country
"spirit of patriotism and love of one's country"

Surely love of one's country and patriotism are the same thing? But note that, in this example, one of the terms is a borrowed word while the other is an indigenous Malay phrase, and I wonder if this kind of repetition is especially common when a borrowed word is involved.

One way or another, writers in English need to be careful to avoid tautology. In student assignments, I constantly see expressions such as "communication with other countries abroad" and "I will investigate this issue and find out more about it". And, in recent assignments, lots of students told me that they "distributed a questionnaire to classmates and asked them to fill it in" − what else would one do with a questionnaire? Eat it?