Parataxis and Hypotaxis

Style, again. This time, rhetorical devices, including Hemingway's simple style:

Parataxis is the natural way of speaking English. It’s the way English wants to be spoken. English is a basically uninflected language. Everything depends on the word order. It’s all subject verb object. The man kicked the dog. The cat sat on the mat. The angels have the phone box. In Latin and German it’s different. Words can be moved around, but you still understand the sentence because of the endings. “Nauta amat puellam” and “Puellam nauta amat” both mean “The sailor loves the girl.” English isn’t like that. It’s paratactic. It’s linear. It’s one sentence. Then it’s another. 

The alternative, should you, or any writer of English, choose to employ it (and who is to stop you?) is, by use of subordinate clause upon subordinate clause, which itself may be subordinated to those clauses that have gone before or after, to construct a sentence of such labyrinthine grammatical complexity that, like Theseus before you when he searched the dark Minoan mazes for that monstrous monster, half bull and half man, or rather half woman for it had been conceived from, or in, Pasiphae, herself within a Daedalian contraption of perverted intention, you must unravel a ball of grammatical yarn lest you wander forever, amazed in the maze, searching through dark eternity for a full stop. 

That’s hypotaxis, and it used to be everywhere. 

Forsyth, Mark. The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase (pp. 60-62). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Forsyth blames the Romantics for turning away from hypotaxis, with their search for all things natural in speech.

Hypotaxis is unnatural in English; nobody would ever say a sentence like the one above. You have to think calmly for a long time to come up with a good hypotactic sentence, and so a good hypotactic sentence tells the reader that you have been thinking calmly for long time. 

Forsyth, Mark. The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase (p. 64). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Those looking for an alternative to Hemingway's style might consider the layers of subordinate clauses found in hypotaxis. But beware, it will be a hard sell for such writing to pass the ear test.

UPDATE: Out on social media, Neal gives a useful application of how to use both parataxis and hypotaxis:

Formula for a great speech to an audience of all educational levels. Parataxis with Anglo-Saxon (PAS) words. Restatement and addition of new information in hypotactic structure with introduction of latinate words. Restatement of new information in PAS. Iterate, finishing in parataxis.

Also, parataxis and hypotaxis are not rhetorical devices, such as, say anaphora, aposiopesis, chiasmus, or homeoteleuton are. The are syntactical forms, the use of which (along with assorted devices) can be used to characterize a style.

I believe the shorthand way of referring to ensembles of rhetorical style, back when people had more classical educations, where Ciceronian (hypotactic) and Senecan (paratactic).

 Note how he connects English's dual vocabulary to rhetorical effects--and famous public speakers.