An analysis of verbal parallelism on Eminem Curtain Calls: The Hits album

Abstract

Songwriters or poets have their own styles in composing literary works, often by breaking conventional rules or employing parallelism to create aesthetic value and emphasize certain messages. One of these devices is verbal parallelism. This study aims to identify the types of verbal parallelism and their functions in Eminem’s Curtain Call: The Hits album lyrics. To conduct this study, Leech’s (1969) stylistic theory and a qualitative descriptive method were applied. The findings reveal six types of verbal parallelism: anaphora, epistrophe, symploce, anadiplosis, polyptoton, and homoiteleuton. Among them, anaphora is the most frequently used across the analyzed songs. his frequent use of anaphora serves to underline central ideas or criticisms. For example, in lyrics expressing trauma, or personal experiences, the repetition at the beginning of lines intensifies the message, making it more powerful and difficult to ignore. The conclusion is that Eminem employs verbal parallelism in his lyrics as a stylistic device to strengthen meaning, create rhythm, and emphasize the messages he conveys.