A teacher is giving some information about the class at the very beginning.
"For this course you need the book. Here it is: British Life and Language Level 1 Student's Book. **So, please get a copy of the book. I don't want to see any photocopies of the book, thank you!"
I thought about the sentence "Please get a copy of the book." and wondered why the teacher did not simply say: "Please get the book."
Is the word "copy" redundant here? When you go to the shop, you'd say "THE GUARDIAN(newspaper) please", you wouldn't say "A COPY OF THE GUARDIAN PLEASE", would you?
So, there seems to be no need to say "a copy of the book", because it already means the book. There seems to be no difference betweeen "the book" and "the copy of the book", is there?
Any thoughts?