Seek and Ye shall find
July 5, 2012 § 6 Comments
“What I am looking for is not out there.
It is in me.”
Parallelism is one of my favourite words. Well, the idea of parallelism, what it signifies. Probably the two words I highlight most when I’m training teachers here in the UK are “collocation”, closely followed by “parallelism”.
It’s a feature of good writing, good rhetoric, and once you’re aware of it, you can’t help but notice it cropping up everywhere.
Not only that, in normal speech, we often repeat, rephrase and paraphrase, so here too, parallelism is very common.
Here’s an example, an extract from Martin Luther King Junior’s famous “I have a dream” speech:
“I have a dream that
every mountain shall be made low
every valley shall be exalted
the rough places shall be made plain
and the crooked places shall be made straight
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed
and all flesh shall see it together.”
Can you see how each line follows a similar pattern? That’s parallelism.
Keep an ear out for it in speeches, or an eye out in writing, look for it in poetry especially, but also in everyday prose. Turn over a stone and you’ll find it lurking underneath, pull apart the branches and you’ll discover it hiding behind, peer up overhead and it’ll be hovering above, it’s everywhere!
And fortunately, for language learners, it’s inspiring and perfect language to study.