In addition to pronoun references, synonyms, and repeated words, parallelism is an important means of creating coherence. Parallelism occurs when grammatical structures like phrases and clauses are repeated. People know from experience that similar containers indicate similar contents. Shoe boxes have a characteristic size and shape, and so we can reasonably predict that boxes of these dimensions contain shoes. Plastic bottles of particular shapes contain consumable liquids. Foil and cellophane packages of certain dimensions contain cigarettes. Likewise, readers know that recurring grammatical structures signal similar ideas. Skillful writers make use of this understanding and accommodate their reader's expectations by putting like things in like ways.
But even more important than the way sentences look is the way they sound. The parallel elements, when silently spoken by that internal voice that accompanies all reading, create a refrain. The repeated sounds are the real cue that what is being read is like what was read before. Skilled public speakers capitalize on the repeated sounds of parallel structures to add emphasis to their ideas. The repeated portions of the sentences fix themselves in memory.
Parallelism is a way of signaling logical coordination. When two sentences look alike and sound alike, readers assume that the concepts they express are also alike. For two concepts to be logically coordinate, they must belong to the same class and represent the same level of generalization. (You might say that they are children of the same node of a hierarchy.)
Logical coordination is illustrated by classification systems. In biology, wolves and dogs are logically coordinate since both represent the genus canis. Men and monkys are coordinate member of the order of primates. The government, the military, and church organizations also provide examples. Within the executive branch, the cabinet secretaries serve under the president but are on an equal level with one another in the bureaucratic structure. In the army, privates first class are equals but are subordinate to corporals, and corporals are equals but are subordinate to sargents. In the Catholic church, the cardinals are all subordinate to the pope, but are officially equal within the college of cardinals.
In writing, two sentences are logically coordinate if they both comment on the same preceding sentence. However, If either one of a pair in question comments on the other, then the sentence that makes the comment is subordinate to the sentence that it talks about.
The sentences from two paragraphs in Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech illustrate how parallel structure signals logical coordination. They also suggests the powerful rhetorical effect of using parallel structure to create a refrain. The sentences are listed sequentially below.
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1. I have a dream that one day . . .
1. I have a dream that one day. . .
1. I have a dream that . . .
1. I have a dream today.
1. I have a dream that one day. . .
2. This is our hope.
2. This is the faith with which I return to the South.
3.With this faith we will be able to . . .
3.With this faith we will be able to . . .
3 With this faith we will be able to . . .
To make the logical coordination and subordination of ideas clear in this outline, a title (The American Dream) has been supplied as a superordinate. All of the sentences in the paragraphs make a comment either directly or indirectly about this title and are therefore subordinate to it. The first six sentences comment directly by relating some aspect of King's dream for America. Therefore, these six sentences are logically subordinate to the title and coordinate with each other. The coordination is signaled by the grammatical parallelism of the sentences.
The first level two sentence, "This is our hope," is a comment on all of the ideas expressed in the preceding six sentences, the things which King dreams will one day become realities. The second level two sentence "This is the faith . . . " is likewise subordinate to the six sentences which begin with "I have a dream," but it is coordinate with "This is our hope," being a reiteration of the idea in that sentence but substituting the rhetorical synonym "faith" for "hope." With all the sentences in the outline, logical coordination of the ideas is emphasized by grammatical parallelism.
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