Parallelism Stylistics 551 Lecture 18

Parallelism Apart from deviation, texts use other ways of foregrounding as well. One of the most obvious ones is repetition, which can also occur at all language levels and which clearly brings forward the structure which is repeated – like for instance in Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning, where the repetition of the words ‘no pain’ (“No pain felt she;/I am quite sure she felt no pain”) helps foreground the notion that the murder caused no physical discomfort to the victim.

Parallelism The writer thus draws attention on a notion which readers will find hard to believe and thus signals once more the fact that the speaker might be disturbed, might be distorting the truth, and might not be giving an accurate account of the events narrated. Another frequent stylistic device used for foregrounding purposes is parallelism.

Parallelism In the proverb Out of sight, out of mind the parallel structure functions on the syntactic and on the lexical level (the same grammatical structure is used: a prepositional phrase followed by a noun; moreover, the prepositional phrase is repeated, therefore there is lexical parallelism as well). This foregrounds the opposition between sight and Mind and forces us to create a meaning connection between the two, and then interpret them as similar: what your eyes can’t see is also erased from your mind.

Parallelism The link between sight and mind is further enhanced by the shared notion that we ‘see’ not only with our physical, but also with our mind’s eye. Also, note the phonological parallelism as well – the two foregrounded words both have one syllable, the same vowel sound, and a very similar last consonant (t/d).

Parallelism A parallel structure joins together two or more recognizably similar, yet not identical structures, and can, just like deviation or repetition, occur at all levels of language (phonological, syntactic, morphological etc.). It is very frequently used as a rhetorical device, in both literary and non-literary texts, and is common even in everyday speech, e.g. in proverbs, or in jokes:

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, his books were read. (Hilaire Belloc, On his books) This epigram contains no violations of linguistic rules. Our attention is focused upon a phonological equivalence which would normally be unobserved.

Parallelism as foregrounded Regularity A type of foregrounding which is in a sense opposite of deviation, for it consists in the introduction of extra regularities, not irregularities, into language. To the extent that any use of language consists in obeying rules, regularity or ‘ruledness’ is a property of language in general, both inside and outside poetry.

One of the ways in which language shows itself to be reducible to rules is in the possibility of segmenting a text into structurally equivalent units: e.g. syllables (in phonology) and clauses (in grammar). Thus a text can be analysed as a pattern, on different layers, of repeated similar structure The furrow followed free (Coleridge, Ancient Mariner) Syllabic structure…cv cv-cv cv-cv ccv Rhythmic structure…stress on f Alliterative pattern… f sound repetition

Meter and alliteration are only two of many examples of the type of linguistic foregrounding which consists in making a test more organized than it has to be by virtue of the rules of language. A further example syntactic one can be see in this line by Goldsmith’s Deserted Village: Where wealth accumulates and men decay

“Where wealth accumulates and men decay” This line has identical syntactic structure Each consists of a single-word subject followed by a single word predicate. Where the language allows for a choice from a variety of structures the poet insists on an exact repetition. The term parallelism is above all associated with this sort of syntactic repetition.

Parallelism in its broad sense is precisely the opposite of the kind of foregrounding found in “a grief ago”. In the later case, where a certain range of selections is available in the language, the poet makes a selection beyond this range. With parallelism, where the language allows him a choice, he consistently limits himself to the same option.

How much regularity? I kissed thee ere I killed thee (Shakespeare, Othello) The two clauses have identical structures (s+v+o) The exact verbal correspondence of I and thee Corresponding past tense suffixes A phonological congruence between Kissed and Killed

The parallelism in “where wealth accumulates and men decay” resides not just inn the identity of clause structures (S+V) but in the fact that each element of the clause consists of only one word. If it is “ where wealth accumulates and good men decay” the patter would be considerable weaker because there would no longer be such close grammatical correspondence.

These examples give some idea of what factors enter into the assessment of how strong a parallelism is: Whether it extends to both lexical and grammatical choices, whether it operates simultaneously on different layers of structure; whether it involves patterning on both phonological and formal level.