Bartleby the Scrivener

Throughout the story, Bartleby continuously says " I would prefer not to. I believe this is his attempt to remain in solitude and to keep his past a secret. However, overtime this begins to affect the other characters' speaking. The repetition of Bartleby's words sticks into their own minds and become their own habit. In a normal sentence where before "prefer" would not be a needed word, it became one. Eventually the other characters of the the story get into the same routine and can not stop using the word as well. I think part of this is due to psychological ingraining throughout Bartleby's job there. It is just habit formation, although I wonder why in particular this phrase was chosen to be used instead of one merely similar to it.