Parallelism (grammar)
In grammar, parallelism, also known as parallel structure or parallel construction, is a balance within one or more sentences of similar phrases or clauses that have the same grammatical structure.[1] The application of parallelism affects readability and may make texts easier to process.[2]
Parallelism may be accompanied by other figures of speech such as antithesis, anaphora, asyndeton, climax, epistrophe, and symploce.[3]
Examples
[edit]Compare the following examples:
| Lacking parallelism | Parallel |
|---|---|
| "She likes cooking, jogging, and to read." | "She likes cooking, jogging, and reading."
"She likes to cook, jog, and read." |
| "He likes to play baseball and running." | "He likes playing baseball and running."
"He likes to play baseball and to run." |
| "The dog ran across the yard, jumped over the fence, and sprinted away." | "The dog ran across the yard, jumped over the fence, and sprinted down the alley." |
All of the above examples are grammatically correct, even if they lack parallelism: "cooking", "jogging", and "to read" are all grammatically valid conclusions to "She likes", for instance. The first nonparallel example has a mix of gerunds and infinitives. To make it parallel, the sentence can be rewritten with all gerunds or all infinitives. The second example pairs a gerund with a regular noun. Parallelism can be achieved by converting both terms to gerunds or to infinitives. The final phrase of the third example does not include a definite location, such as "across the yard" or "over the fence"; rewriting to add one completes the sentence's parallelism.
In rhetoric
[edit]Parallelism is often used as a rhetorical device. Examples:
- "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." — Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 22 October 1945[4]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Gary Blake and Robert W. Bly, The Elements of Technical Writing, pg. 71. New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1993. ISBN 0020130856
- ^ For the point about processing, see Carlson, Katy. Parallelism and Prosody in the Processing of Ellipsis Sentences. Routledge, 2002, pp. 4–6.
- ^ "Rhetorical Figures in Sound: Parallelism". American Rhetoric. Archived from the original on 15 January 2018.
- ^ "Vice of Capitalism". International Churchill Society. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
External links
[edit]- Faulty Parallelism, Nipissing University