Abstract：Rhetoric is the skill of using language in speech or writing in a special way that influences or entertains people. To express feelings and thoughts vividly and with more force, we, more often than not, resort to rhetorical devices, of which parallelism is the more commonly employed. The author of this thesis has singled out parallelism as the object of research after an extensive study of rhetoric. With a detailed analysis of forms and functions of parallelism, the author proceeds to take up its use in political speech and demonstrate in a convincing manner the ways in which parallelism enhances and reinforces the effect on the audience of sample political speeches by President Barack Obama, President George W. Bush and President John F. Kennedy respectively. To some extent, it is not exaggerated to say that their success in political speech owes greatly to the success of rhetoric, in particular, parallelism, in their respective political speeches.

Key Words: rhetorical functions; parallelism; political speech

摘要：修辞学是在演讲或写作中利用以特殊的方式来影响或娱乐人们的一种言语技巧。在大部分情况下，为了使感情和思想表达更为生动有力，我们往往借助修辞手法，其中排比的使用更为普遍。本文作者通过对修辞的广泛研究之后选择排比作为研究对象。经过对排比的形式与功能的具体分析，分别以巴拉克·奥巴马总统、乔治·W·布什总统和约翰·F·肯尼迪总统的政治演讲作为例文，论文作者进而研究排比在政治演讲中的具体使用，更有说服力地展示出排比对听众所起到的加强效果。某种程度上，毫不夸张地说他们各自的政治演讲的成功极大地归功于修辞学的成功运用，尤其是排比这一修辞手法。

关键词：修辞功能；排比；政治演讲