In each case, spot the parallelisms, specify them,
work out their 'local' parallelistic effects and connect these effects
to your overall understanding of the passage. Then click on the button
after each extract to compare your views with ours. We have provided sentence
numbers for ease of reference:
Extract 1
(5) The candidate sat opposite wondering
what to do. (6) The chair had a soft seat but wooden arms. (7) She
crossed her legs first one way and then the other - then wondered
about crossing her legs at all. (8) She wondered whether to get up.
(9) There was a cigarette box beside her. (10) She wondered whether
she would be offered a cigarette.
Extract 2
(15) Seeing how much you could take. (16)
Typical Cambridge. (17) A sign of the times. (18) An hour later and
then the second interview - five of them this time behind a table
- four women, one man, all in old clothes. (19) That had been a long
one. (20) Polite though. (21) Not so bad.
Extract 3
(32) They move their pens about, purse
their lips, turn to one another from the waist, put together the tips
of their fingers.
We have already commented on the parallelism in sentence 6 in Task
B, and so will not consider that here. But there is another general parallelism
in sentences 5, 7, 8 and 10, centring on the verb 'wondered', which
has a noun phrase or a pronoun referring to the candidate as its subject
in each case. The object of 'wonder' in each case is a noun clause.
These clauses each relate to relative trivial actions which she is considering,
reinforcing the idea that she is hyper-aware and so thinking of trivial
things as well as the questions she is being asked. The verb 'wonder'
also involves indecision, which thus also contributes to the overall
hyper-aware and uncertain attitude of Bilgewater. Sentence 7 also involves
a lower-level parallelism, in 'first one way and then the other', which,
although it uses the coordinator 'and', not 'but', clearly brings out
the attitudinal uncertainty we saw in Task B.
In this example, you probably felt a 'same meaning' parallelistic effect
between sentences 16 and 17, and between sentences 20 and 21. First
of all, all four of these sentences are odd in that they are grammatically
elliptical (they do no have subjects or verbs), something which we will
look at a bit more when we look more generally at grammar in the passage.
But what makes the two pairs of sentences seem parallel is that the
first pair each consist of a short noun phrase and the second pair each
consist of an adjective phrase. The first pair have a 'same meaning'
relation (negative in both cases), and the second pair have an 'opposite
meaning' relation, ending on a positive note. There are also some other,
rather trivial, parallelisms (e.g. between 'four women' and 'one man'
which we will not bother to discuss.
This sentence has four clauses, each of which has a dynamic verb. The
first clause has 'they' as subject of 'move', and 'they' refers to the
interviewers. Each of the other clauses has no explicit subject, but
it is clear that in all the cases that the interviewers are the subjects
to the verbs, and so the actors in the processes involved. The actions
involved are small and trivial. In two cases they 'act upon' their own
body parts ('lips', 'tips of their fingers', in one they act upon something
they possess ('their pens') and in the other case they attend to each
other. The effect of this parallelism is to make them appear as a homogeneous
group rather than as a set of individuals, who all do trivial things.
This in turn can be related to the candidate's heightened perception
because of the interview situation.
