Aspects of Political Language and Parallelism

Abstract

This research is intended to explain the use of parallelism in political speeches. When politicians want to emphasize and reach their aims , they use parallelism . political speeches is pregnant with meaning . Parallelism is a device which expresses several ideas in a series of similar structures .

There are different types of parallelism : lexical, syntactic , semantic, synthetic , binary, antithetical . Parallelism works on different levels: 1. Syntactic level in which there are parallel structure of word phrase or sentence , 2. Semantic  level in which there are synonymous and antonymous relations , 3. Phonological level in which we can find alliteration , assonance and rhyme .

There are three categories in structural (syntactic) parallelism . First , parallelism at the word level . Secondly, parallelism  at the phrase level , and thirdly parallelism at the clause level. Parallelism is considered as rhetorical and stylistic device . the rhetorical function of parallelism is to strengthen , empower, emphasize, persuade and have a big impact on recipients .

The connection between parallelism and political speeches lies in the fact that politicians rely on linguistic repertoire in order to obtain and achieve their objectives and aims , one of these linguistic  configurations is parallelism . a language can be thought of as resource which is drawn upon in order for political goals to be achieved .

Parallelism can function as a cohesive device through cohesive repetition since it is considered as a partial repetition . Cohesive repetition is used by politicians to persuade audience and manipulate them for certain aims and issues .