Parallelism In Outliers

Style, in literature is crucial for individualizing one author’s work from another. In Outliers, Gladwell implements stylistic elements of denouement, parallelism, calls to action, and colloquialism to enhance his writing piece. Through these writing styles, Gladwell is able to maintain the attention of the reader, create an informal mood with the reader, connect ideas, and add emphasis. Gladwell is able to add emphasis in his writing through the application of parallelism in his writing. Parallelism is the order of arrangement of words in a sentence. An example of parallelism would be, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” (Angell 85). Gladwell similarly uses parallelism in Outliers. He writes, “Opportunity number one”, “Opportunity number two”, “Number three”, “Number four” (Gladwell 54), all the way up to number nine. Parallelism in this instance of
Colloquialism is, “A word or expression appropriate to informal conversation but not usually suitable for academic or business writing.” (Angell 82). The use of colloquialism in an informative argumentative piece is usually atypical, however, colloquialism is a major factor towards creating a comfortable feel for the reader. Colloquialism allows the reader to read without getting uninterested or fatigued. Another factor towards keeping the attention of the reader is due to the authors multiple calls to action. For example, “Now try this one. It’s the kind of really hard question that comes at the end of the Raven’s.” (Gladwell 78). Gladwell then provides the reader a question from an IQ test for them to try. This shows how the calls to action supplement the reader’s attention. The reader is constantly being bombarded with questions to think about or problems to solve. The informal tone complemented with the calls to actions keep the reader’s attention, in result making them more vulnerable to