Redundancy As Exclamation

We are taught that redundancy is a bad thing.  Well, it certainly can be.  Saying the same thing over and over again can get old pretty quickly.  But sometimes redundancy has its uses.  For example, it can be used as an exclamation.

"This is the same exact meal I got the last seven days."  The word "exact" is redundant; it could be dropped and the sentence would not be changed.  If the meals were different, then the speaker didn't get the same meals, only similar meals.

But that word does affect the sentence.  There is a noticeable difference between "This is the same meal I got the last seven days" and "This is the same exact meal I got the last seven days."  The latter sentence, with that redundant word in it, has a stronger emphasis.  It is obvious that the speaker really cares about this fact and is stressing that the meals were not merely similar.

This one word, in fact, adds a tremendous amount of detail.  It may be unnecessary from the standpoint of grammar, but it is crucial in explaining the thoughts and feelings of the speaker.

In this case, there are no redundancies; removing that one word assuredly changes the sentence.