Parallelism Analysis: The American Dream

"I Have a Dream" Analysis: Figurative LanguageQuote: "I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream."
Metaphor: The American dream is indirectly compared to rich soil, a soil in which King has planted his dream of racial equality.
Analysis: King reiterates that his dream is no different than the dream of the Founding Fathers. His dream receives its legitimacy from the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution to which King refers earlier in the speech.
Quote: "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate
From every mountainside, let freedom ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city ... (Paragraphs 19 through 25) the words 'Let Freedom ring ... ' has been repeated as many as nine times to indicate that it is the whole of the United States rather than any part of it that should be bathed in the sunshine of freedom. 3.2 Use of Parallelism Parallelism is another syntactic over-regularity. It means exact repetition in equivalent positions. It differs from simple repetition in that the identity does not extend to absolute duplication, it 'requires some variable feature of the pattern-some contrasting elements which are ' parallel ' with respect to their position in the pattern '(Leech, 1969:66). To put it simply, parallelism means the balancing of sentence elements that are grammatically equal. To take them parallel, balance nouns with nouns, verbs with verbs, prepositional phrases with prepositional phrases, clauses with clauses, and so forth. In his speech, Martin Luther King uses parallelism to create a strong rhythm to help the audience line up his ideas. Here are few examples: ⑤ ... by the manacles of seGREgation and the chains of discrimination ... (Par.2, two parallel noun phrases) ⑥ 'This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drag of gradualism. ' (Par.4, two parallel infinitive phrases:
a desert state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. (Par. 11) (38) ... where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. (Par. 12) (39) With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. (Par. 17) (40) With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. 4. Conclusion As we have analyzed above, stylistic devices are frequently used in the discourse of literary works especially in speech, to achieve certain specific purposes. Thus making the style of a speech somewhat particular to the others. Generally speaking, a speech may have the following stylistic characteristics: To begin with, it must be very persuasive. Thus the sentence patterns are very well-organized, with repetitions, parallelism and contrasts frequently used. Secondly, it should be emotional so as to be convincing, because the speaker should face the audience directly and his words should not only be orderly and informative but also be expressive and inspiring. Therefore, the stylistic devices such as similes and metaphors are often involved . Finally, in many cases, written-conversational style is usually used with not very formal diction and not very complicated sentence structure. Bibliography: [1]. Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream, August 28, 1963 [2]. Wang Shouyuan,