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Parallelism: non-literary examples
We have seen in the pages on deviation that linguistic deviation foregrounds
(makes prominent) particular parts of texts and helps us to infer new
aspects of meaning for the deviant text-parts. Another way in which parts
of texts can be foregrounded is by the use of local patterning. A good
example of such patterning is when two or more structures are parallel
one another. In other words, they are structurally similar in some way,
but not exact repetitions of one another.
Besides foregrounding the parts of texts they occur in, parallel structures
also affect meaning. They often (but not always) induce readers to perceive
a 'same meaning' or 'opposite meaning' relationship between the parallel
parts. We like to call this the 'parallelism processing rule',
though it is important to notice that it is not a hard and fast rule -
it applies pretty regularly, but not always, by any means. Let's have
a look at this rule working with a made-up example before exploring its
use more generally.
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