Linguistic features of parallelism

Abstract EN

This study deals with the linguistic analysis of parallelism in American and British political speeches during the period of election .

Parallelism is considered a linguistic phenomenon which functions on three levels : syntactic , semantic and phonological .

Parallelism is a rhetorical device which explains the relationship between linguistic structures which are parallel to each other .

Different types of parallelism may be distinguished at the linguistic structure : lexical , syntactic , synonymous , synthetic , antithetical , binary and ternary .

Politicians use parallelism to make their speech cohesive , to persuade their audience and to emphasize their aims .

The study intends to achieve the following aims : ( 1 ) indicating the use of parallelism in American and British political speeches ; ( 2 ) exploring the role of parallelism in American and British political speeches ; ( 3 ) presenting a linguistic analysis of parallelism ; ( 4 ) attempting to find out the role of rhetorical devices in American and British political speeches .

To achieve the aims of the study , it is hypothesized that : (1) Both American and British politicians resort to parallelism with similar aim of persuading audience and express their ideas ; (2) parallelism plays an important role in political speeches ; (3) parallelism works on three levels of linguistic analysis : syntactic , semantic and phonological ; (4) American and British politicians use rhetorical devices to make the influence of parallelism so effective .

To test the validity of these hypothesis , certain procedures have been followed : 1-presenting a theoretical background of the relevant literature written about the topic .

2-Presenting knowledge about aspects of political language with reference to parallelism .

3-Using an eclectic model to analyze the term parallelism linguistically depending on different references .

4- Analyzing certain texts selected from American and British political speeches .

The content of the study consists of five chapters .

Chapter one represents the introduction which includes statement of the problem , aims of the study , hypotheses , procedures , limits of the study and value of the study .

Chapter two is devoted to the study of aspects of political language and parallelism .

Chapter three comprises the theoretical background and linguistic features of parallelism .

Chapter four deals with the practical side of the study which include data analysis and results of analysis .