By Jude Saleh
Abstract
This research paper delves into the phenomenon of parallelism in Arabic writing and its impact on the composition styles of native Arabic-speaking students at the American University of Sharjah. Drawing on Kaplan’s (1966) claims on how thought patterning differs across people of different cultures, this study aims to assess how linguistic variations influence the writing conventions of Arabic and English speakers with a focus on syntactic parallelism, coordination and subordination, comma splice errors, and paragraph structure. By analyzing 20 working drafts from a general education required academic writing course, 10 authored by native Arabic speakers and 10 by proficient English speakers, this study aims to examine the significance of Kaplan’s dated claims and shed some light on the unexplored difficulties faced by students learning to write in a non-native language.
Keywords: Rhetoric, thought-patterning, English language, Arabic language, lexical parallelism, syntactic parallelism, coordination, subordination
Introduction
“Speak of the white lily and praise its beauty, and don’t forget the rose and praise its magnificence” (Talafha & Rekabdar, 2019, para. 5) is a generated Arabic poetry line that demonstrates parallelism and coordination, hallmarks of Arabic writing. Parallelism, or the repetition of linguistic structures, in Arabic prose is a salient phenomenon frequently occuring at the morphological, lexical, syntactic, and textual linguistic levels of writing (Monasser, 2014). It is this parallelism that gives rise to writing that is highly coordinated, with many run-on sentences and paragraphs. This is because parallel structures carry equal weight, both semantically and grammatically. The use of either coordinators or commas alone, rather than subordinators, highlights the independence of the structures in that they are both of equal importance and neither structure is dependent on the other. Textually, this occurs because if all syntactic units are of equal independence and importance, specific functions like “introduction,” “hook,” and “conclusion” cannot be delegated to individual sentences. Elcanon Issacs (1919) proposed the Beautiful Idea Theory, which hypothesizes that this parallelism emerged due to the poets of the past wanting to beautify their poetry—to write lyrically, succinctly, and poignantly. This theory is further reinforced when considering the large role poetry has played in Arabic history. Britannica (n.d., para. 1) writes that “[f]rom the very earliest stages in the Arabic literary tradition, poetry has reflected the deepest sense of Arab self-identity, of communal history, and of aspirations for the future.” Therefore, Arabs felt a great desire for their spoken and transcribed language to embody these poetic standards.
The basis for this research paper stems from the findings in Robert B. Kaplan’s (1966) article titled “Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education.” To exemplify, Kaplan asserts that the teaching of reading and composition to students of different cultures should vary because logic, which is the basis behind rhetoric, varies from culture to culture. Rhetoric, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary (n.d.), is the art of using formal language with the goal of persuasion. Hence, students of different cultures will use different linguistic means to achieve that goal. Kaplan assesses the various thought patterns of different languages by comparing their paragraph conventions. Stern (1976) describes a paragraph as an arbitrary “unit of thought” governed by the speaker’s judgment of what ordering of sentences constitutes clear communication and rhetoric. For English speakers, Kaplan claims, thought patterning in paragraphs follows a linear succession. In Arabic, however, sentence and paragraph development is parallelistic. When translated into English, such texts may seem foreign, awkward, or archaic to the L1 English speaker, whose native and dominant tongue is English.
In my research, I aim to measure the extent of Kaplan’s dated findings on the multilingual community of the American University of Sharjah (AUS). I decided to undergo this research because Kaplan’s hypotheses intrigue me as they demonstrate how a student could be completely unaware of how their writing translates to a non-fluent speaker of their native tongue; while an Arabic speaker could be adamant that their writing follows a logical sequence, a non-Arab professor may disagree. Therefore, I hope that my research can shed some light on the true difficulties faced by some students in understanding why their ideas never seem to translate to their professors in their written assignments, by demonstrating that there exist differences in thought patterning and rhetoric between people of different cultures. In this paper, I argue that native Arabic-speaking students, due to parallelistic interference from their native tongue, demonstrate a high degree of coordination, frequent comma splice errors, and run-on paragraphs in their writing.
Methods
To keep my research centered in the context of the American University of Sharjah, I limited my research to two languages: Arabic, the predominant native tongue of many AUS students, and English, the language of AUS’ curriculum. For my research, I analyzed 20 different English 204 working drafts. English 204 is a semester-long academic writing class which is broken down into various assignments and culminates in the submission of a 10-to-12-page research paper. 10 of the drafts I collected were written by native Arabic speakers, and the remaining 10 were written by model students from a variety of different cultures; the remaining 10 achieved outstanding grades, so they were assumed to follow the thought patterning and paragraph conventions expected of native English speakers. The drafts were analyzed for the ratios of coordinating to subordinating conjunctions and the number and length of paragraphs.
Furthermore, to ensure the fairness of the comparison, the drafts were written by students in classes taught by at least five different professors, which means that the variability in instructional styles was accounted for.
Similarly, I chose to analyze 204 papers because the syllabus and grading rubric for English 204 are shared amongst all the professors who teach the course, mitigating the effects different grading criteria have on the students’ writing. The biggest limitation, however, of this analysis is having to assume the students’ cultural background from their first and last names. Another limitation is having to assume that the model students’ papers were not subject to interference from their native tongue. The final limitation is the small sample size of 20. A potential confounding variable could have been at play, as there might have been factors that influenced whether a student would consent to have their essays used as part of this research, as those who sent me their essays might be the high-achieving, confident writers. T-tests were performed, and standard deviation values were determined to assess the significance of my findings.
What is Parallelism?
Lexical, syntactic, and textual parallelism predominate in native Arabic speakers’ writing conventions. Lexically, parallelism can occur due to replication, which is the repetition of the lexical stem, or alternation, which is the repetition of alternatives of the lexical stem. Syntactic parallelism, on the other hand, can occur due to the replication or alternation of similar meanings in different syntactic forms. Finally, textual parallelism is the repetition of larger bodies of text (Monasser, 2014). An example of lexical parallelism with the replication of the lexical stem is “I will search for you, road-by-road.” An example of parallelism due to the alternation of the lexical stem is “It’s not a reason, but a cause.” Here, the writer provides alternatives and/or contrasts to fortify their assertions. Syntactic parallelism due to replication is the recurrence of independent and dependent clauses with similar meanings in the same sentence. An example of this is “You broke my heart and you made me sad, and you made me cry, and you made me hate life itself.” A heightened use of coordination is usually necessary to achieve this. Syntactic parallelism due to alternation is the successive reoccurrence of alternatives for the same thought in the phrase, clause, or sentence form. An example of this is in the sentence, “You are not facing failure, you are facing possibilities.” Here, a comma alone connects two independent clauses—another hallmark of Arabic script and a consequence of parallelism. Parallelism is a very pervasive rhetorical strategy in Arabic writing for a myriad of reasons. In addition to Arabic writing being influenced by poetic standards, parallelism can also be employed as a rhetorical strategy.
Islam & Cahyani (2020, para. 1) explain that the “deliberate use of a word or phrase more than once in a sentence or a text … can be utilized [as] a major rhetorical strategy for producing emphasis, clarity, amplification, or emotional effect.” Similarly, according to Shamaileh (2022), when parallelism is used frequently in Arabic political speeches, it emphasizes that this repetition was a deliberate choice, enhancing the persuasiveness of the speech. Hence, as Kaplan asserted, rhetoric can vary from culture to culture. Individuals of different cultures will use different linguistic means to enhance the persuasiveness, or rhetorical appeal, of their written and/or spoken language. In Arabic, the increased use of parallelism is used. However, in a non-Semitic language, this comes with an increased prevalence of writing errors. They include the favoring of coordination over subordination, comma-splice errors, and run-on paragraphs. These consequences are problematic for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, Waleed Othman (2004) maintains that writing that is highly coordinated results in a bland and uninteresting text, unlike its effect in Arabic text. Secondly, connecting two independent clauses is a “comma-splice” error in English. These errors are a salient phenomenon in the writings of first-language Arabic speakers; in fact, entire ESL handbooks have been written to help prevent these errors. Finally, run-on paragraphs in English may hinder comprehension.
Consequence 1: Coordination vs. Subordination
The first consequence that arises because of parallelism is the increased use of coordinators rather than subordinators—the second of Kaplan’s claims. It is also emphasized that even when writing in a non-Semitic language like English, for example, features of their native tongue, like the extensive use of coordinating conjunctions rather than subordinating ones, still permeate through their work. According to Waleed Othman (2004), coordinators are used to express related thoughts that carry approximately the same weight; that is, they are equal both syntactically and semantically. With subordination, unequal ideas are expressed. One clause carries more weight than the other. Hence, coordination is more “hard-wired” in the minds of native Arab speakers. Furthermore, Dr. James Dickens (2017), a professor of Arabic at the University of Leeds, states that the most basic lexical coordinating conjunction in English is “and” while in Arabic they are و /wa/ and ف /fa/. He elaborates that the “and” coordinator is very limited in the senses it covers, while the two Arabic coordinators together can be extended to convey other senses that “and” alone cannot.
For example, the Arabic lexical coordinator ف /fa/ can be used to indicate a cause-and-effect relationship, similar to the way the subordinating conjunction “because” does. Thus, Arabic has more varied meaning possibilities and lexical resources when it comes to coordination, encouraging its use. In my analysis, I found that the average word count of the Arabic speakers’ essays was 3025, and “and” was used an average of 85 times. The average word count of the model students’ essays was 3785, and “and” was used an average of 78 times. This means that, when taking the word count into account, native Arabic-speaking students utilize the “and” coordinator 1.36x more than the model students.
To determine whether native Arabic speakers do indeed rely more heavily on coordination, I analyzed each of my 20 working drafts to determine the number of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions in each set. Coordinating conjunctions include for, and, nor, but, or, so, and yet. Subordinating conjunctions include after, although, as, as if, because, before, how, if, since, than, though, unless, until, when, where, and while. The average ratio of coordinating to subordinating conjunctions in the native Arabic speakers’ essay was 1.47:1. The average ratio of coordinating to subordinating conjunctions in the model students’ essay was 1.63:1. Thus, while my findings illustrate that Arab students at AUS do indeed use more coordination than subordination, this does not necessarily suggest that they use a larger ratio of coordination to subordination than the model students, and both groups rely heavily on coordination rather than subordination. Similar results were obtained by Afaf Hamda (2018), who compared an English short story and an Arabic short story. She found that the ratio of coordinating to subordinating conjunctions in the English story was 7.8:1 and 5.7:1 in the Arabic story. Hence, it can be inferred that the increased coordination in Arabic speakers’ texts does not necessarily come with fewer subordinations.
My hypothesis, which suggests that Arab speakers’ increased coordination is relative to native English speakers’ coordination use and does not imply decreased subordination, was further reinforced when I found that the Arab students’ drafts contained a combined total of 1605 coordinators, while the model students’ drafts contained a combined total of 1078 coordinators. Native Arab students are 150% more likely to utilize coordinators. To check the significance of these findings, I conducted an unpaired, one-tailed t-test of two independent means at a significance level of 10%.
My claim is that Arab students rely more heavily on coordination than native English speakers. My results were as follows: t(9) = 1.38, p < 0.10. My results were significant at the given significance level and were unlikely to be caused by mere chance or calculation error. In short, in the context of the American University of Sharjah, my findings suggest that native Arabic-speaking students are more likely to use coordinators than native English speakers; of these coordinators, “and” is the most common.
Consequence 2: Comma Splices
The second of these consequences arises because, in Arabic, only using a comma to separate independent clauses to highlight their parallels is acceptable, even encouraged. Dickens (2017) further adds to his previous assertions stating that English makes more use of single-clause sentences than Arabic; a way Arab speakers might synthesize multi-clause sentences is by relating successive thoughts with a comma alone, rather than a coordinator with a comma, a semi-colon, or a full-stop. An English as a Second Language (ESL) handbook by Gomaa-Moulds (2010, para. 2) states that “Arab writers tend to write very long sentences, some of which could be a paragraph long with one full stop at the end and so many commas in between.” To exemplify, Rasoul Khafaji (2001) lists the myriad of ways a comma could be utilized in Arabic, one of which includes connecting two semantically related utterances that together express a complete thought. Hence, this broad use of commas demonstrates the sheer frequency of comma splice errors in Arab ESL students.
In a similar vein, Syed B. Ahmad (1999) wrote a book that scrutinized the linguistic and textual nuances of Qur’anic script. One of his findings illustrates that the verses of the Quran are divided according to the rhythm of the verse and are not subject to any strict rules; commas are extensively utilized throughout not because its syntax demands it, but as rhetorical strategies for emphasis, for breath, or for a need to pause. This assertion lends itself to generations of Arab students’ comma splice errors when considering the impact the Qur’anic script had on the evolution of the Arabic language, as Dr. Muhammad Sabo (2019) states that the rules governing Arabic linguistics emerged as a consequence of Arabs wanting to replicate the flow, rhythm, and structure of the Quran for increased persuasion. Such findings together emphasize how “comma splices” in Arabic can be used persuasively as rhetorical devices; thus, they concur with Kaplan’s first claim, which maintains that logic and rhetoric in writing vary from culture to culture. Therefore, Arab students are more likely to make comma splice errors and to use commas for a stylistic effect when they’re not needed when writing in a non-native language.
Consequence 3: Run-on Paragraphs
The final consequence emerges because paragraphs submit to parallelism as well. English speakers tend to have a linear thought progression, beginning with a point, then evidence, then an explanation. In Arabic, paragraphs are longer and more drawn out. The paragraphs are built through a series of parallel syntactic units that often all carry the same grammatical and semantic weight; thus, unlike how English expository paragraphs delegate each single-sentenced unit in the text a clear and concise function, Arabic esteems all sentences equally and relates them through coordinators and commas, leading to the phenomenon of “run-on” paragraphs. Afaf Hamda (2018) analyzed two short stories: one authored by a native Arabic speaker and the other by a native English speaker. One of her findings determined that while the native-English speaker’s story contained a total of 73 paragraphs, the native Arabic speaker’s story contained just one long paragraph that relates consecutive sentences through a variety of conjunctions and commas. Such drawn out paragraphs may hurt comprehension and readability, as research by Markel et al. (1992) found that paragraphs over 100 words in length dissuaded the participants of the research from reading them, suggesting that paragraphing must provide a single chunk of information aided by a visual break in the page. Paragraphs failing to do so may hinder ease of comprehension.
I attempted to determine whether native Arabic speaking students’ paragraphs at AUS were run on. To do this, I analyzed the average word count and paragraph count of each of my sets of data. I found that the model students’ essays had an average word count of 3785 words and 24 paragraphs. On the other hand, native Arabic speakers’ essays had an average of 3025 words and 13 paragraphs. In other words, the model students had, approximately, 158 words per paragraph, while the native Arabic speakers had 233 words per paragraph. Despite the more words per paragraph, it is important to note that a greater average word per paragraph value does not imply that the students are writing run-on paragraphs. Several other factors could be at play, which include wordiness, a lack of clarity in conveying ideas, or the students simply being more verbose. The average standard deviation for the paragraph word count of the model students was 29, meaning that the word count varied by an average of 29 words from the mean paragraph word count. The average standard deviation for the paragraph word count of the native Arabic speaker students was 116, meaning that the word count varied by an average of 116 words from the mean paragraph word count. The much higher standard deviation associated with the native Arabic speakers writing likely implies that their increased paragraph length was not a deliberate, stylistic choice but a structural error, not influenced by cultural and linguistic nuances.
Conclusion
In summary, Kaplan’s findings shed light on the features that emerge when one brings two historically and linguistically different languages into collision. My research was inspired by his assertions and was undertaken to determine their significance at the lexical, syntactic, and textual levels in the American University of Sharjah, an English-speaking higher-education institution where Arabic speakers predominate. Kaplan claimed that parallelism is the defining feature of Arabic rhetoric. When taking this claim as a fact, three consequences emerge in light of it when writing in English. The first is the heightened use of coordination over subordination. My findings at AUS suggest that while Arab students are considerably more likely to use coordinators compared to the model students, their increased coordination did not come with decreased subordination. The most common of these coordinators was “and.” Second is the extensive occurrence of comma-splice errors. According to numerous research findings, commas in Arabic can be used to connect independent clauses and create stylistic effects—linguistic manifestations of logic and rhetoric. When translated into English, however, such attempts may be perceived as errors that fail to communicate the message of the sentence concisely. Third is the commonality of run-on paragraphs in Arabic script. Because parallel syntactic units mirror each other both grammatically and semantically, concise, single-lined constructions such as “topic sentence,” “evidence sentence,” “concluding sentence,” and “transition phrase” are uncommon. My findings suggest that Arab students at AUS have fewer and much longer paragraphs relative to the model students, with greater variability in word count per paragraph. Despite my findings, further analysis is needed to assess their significance, as my research was limited by the small sample size and lack of access to background information about each student.
To conclude, however, it is essential to realize that no thought patterning trend is superior to the other; problems only arise when such rhetorical devices attempt to be used in a language that lacks the linguistic capabilities to convey their rhetoric. As educators and tutors, it is important to acknowledge the potential strengths that come with such patterns. For example, with a parallelistic way of thinking, there is great capacity for writing that is very cohesively linked, as the parallels between each successive thought can easily be identified. Similarly, structures that are equivalent grammatically are essential for listing items in the same tense in a thesis statement, for example; in synthesizing equivalent topics and concluding sentences; and in adding equivalent headings and subheadings. Hence, students must be recognized for their strengths and educated on why their mistakes are considered errors in the English language, rather than being criticized with little explanation. All things considered, the more we decipher the cross-cultural influences on writing in a second language, the further we move towards finding a more inclusive environment that appreciates the diversity of linguistic expression.
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