Parole

Parole (pronounced puh-rohl or pa-rawl (French))

(1) In penology, the (supervised) conditional release of an inmate from prison prior to the end of the maximum sentence imposed.

(2) Such a release or its duration.

(3) An official document authorizing such a release (archaic except as a modifier).

(4) In military use, the promise (usually in the form of a written certificate) of a prisoner of war, that if released they either will return to custody at a specified time or will not again take up arms against their captors.

(5) Any password given by authorized personnel in passing by a guard (archaic but still used in video gaming).

(6) In military use, a watchword or code phrase; a password given only to officers, distinguished from the countersign, given to all guards (archaic but still used in video gaming).

(7) A word of honor given or pledged (archaic).

(8) In US immigration legislation, the temporary admission of non-U.S. citizens into the US for emergency reasons or on grounds considered in the public interest, as authorized by and at the discretion of the attorney general.

(9) In structural linguistics, language as manifested in the individual speech acts of particular speakers (ie language in use, as opposed to language as a system).

(10) To place or release on parole.

(11) To admit a non-US citizen into the US as provided for in the parole clauses in statute.

(12) Of or relating to parole or parolees:

(13) A parole record (technical use only).

1610–1620: From the Middle French parole (word, formal promise) (short for parole d'honneur (word of honor)), from the Old French parole, from the Late Latin parabola (speech), from the Classical Latin parabola (comparison), from the Ancient Greek παραβολή (parabolḗ) (a comparison; parable (literally “a throwing beside”, hence “a juxtaposition").  The verb was derived from the noun an appeared early in the eighteenth century; originally, it described “what the prisoner did” (in the sense of a “pledge”) but this sense has long been obsolete.  The transitive meaning “put on parole, allow to go at liberty on parole” was in use by the early 1780s while the use to refer to “release (a prisoner) on his own recognizance” doesn’t appear for another century.  The adoption in English was by the military in the sense of a “word of honor” specifically that given by a prisoner of war not to escape if allowed to go about at liberty, or not to take up arms again if allowed to return home while the familiar modern sense of “a (supervised) conditional release of a inmate before their full term is served” was a part of criminal slang by at least 1910.  An earlier term for a similar thing was ticket of leave.  In law-related use, parol is the (now rare) alternative spelling.  Parole is a noun & verb, parolee is a noun, paroled & paroling are verbs and parolable, unparolable, unparoled & reparoled are adjectives (hyphenated use is common); the noun plural is paroles.

A parole board (or parole authority, parole panel etc) is panel of people who decide whether a prisoner should be released on parole and if released, the parolee is placed for a period under the supervision of a parole officer (a law enforcement officer who supervises offenders who have been released from incarceration and, often, recommends sentencing in courts of law).  In some jurisdictions the appointment is styled as “probation officer”.  The archaic military slang pass-parole was an un-adapted borrowing from French passe-parole (password) and described an order passed from the front to the rear by word of mouth. Still sometimes used in diplomatic circles, the noun porte-parole (plural porte-paroles) describes “a spokesperson, one who speaks on another's behalf” and was an un-adapted borrowing from mid sixteenth century French porte-parole, from the Middle French porteparolle.

The Parole Evidence Rule

In common law systems, the parol evidence rule is a legal principle in contract law which restricts the use of extrinsic (outside) evidence to interpret or alter the terms of a written contract.  The operation of the parol evidence rule means that if two or more parties enter into a written agreement intended to be a complete and final expression of their terms, any prior or contemporaneous oral or written statements that contradict or modify the terms of that written agreement cannot be used in court to challenge the contract’s provisions.  The rule applies only to properly constructed written contracts which can be regarded as “final and complete written agreements” and the general purpose is to protect the integrity of the document.  Where a contract is not “held to be final and complete”, parol evidence may be admissible, including cases of fraud, misrepresentation, mistake, illegality or where the written contract is ambiguous.  The most commonly used exceptions are (1) Ambiguity (if a court declares a contract term ambiguous, external evidence may be introduced to to clarify the meaning), (2) Void or voidable contracts (if a contract was entered into under duress or due to fraud or illegality, parol evidence can be used to prove this.  In cases of mistakes, the scope is limited but it can still be possible), (3) Incomplete contracts (if a court determines a written document doesn’t reflect the full agreement between the parties, parol evidence may be introduced to “complete it”, (4) Subsequent agreements (modifications or agreements made after the written contract can generally be proven with parol evidence although in the narrow technical sense such additions may be found to constitute a “collateral contract”.

Parole & probation

Depending on the jurisdiction, “parole” & “probation” can mean much the same thing or things quite distinct, not helped by parolees in some places being supervised by “probation officers” and vice versa.

In the administration of criminal law, “parole” and “probation” are both forms of supervised release but between jurisdictions the terms can either mean the same thing or be applied in different situations.  As a general principle, parole is the conditional release of a prisoner before completing their full sentence and those paroled usually are supervised by a parole officer and must adhere to certain conditions such as regular meetings, drug testing and maintaining employment and certain residential requirements.  The purpose of parole is (1) a supervised reintegration of an inmate into society and (2) a reward for good behavior in prison.  Should a parolee violate the conditions of their release, they can be sent back to prison to serve the remainder of their sentence.  As the word typically is used, probation is a court-ordered period of supervision in the community instead of, or in addition to, a prison sentence.  A term of probation often imposed at sentencing, either as an alternative to incarceration or as a portion of the sentence after release.  Like parolees, individuals on probation are monitored, often by a probation officer (although they may be styled a “parole officer”) and are expected to follow specific conditions.  Probation is in many cases the preferred sentencing option for first offenders, those convicted of less serious offences and those for whom a custodial sentence (with all its implications) would probably be counter-productive.  It has the advantage also of reducing overcrowding in prisons and is certainly cheaper for the state than incarceration.  Those who violate the terms of their probation face consequences such as an extended probation or being sent to jail.  The word “parole” in this context was very much a thing of US English until the post-war years when it spread first to the UK and later elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

Langue & parole

In structural linguistics, the terms “langue” & “parole” were introduced by the groundbreaking Swiss semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and remain two of the fundamental concepts in the framework of structuralism and are treated as important building blocks in what subsequently was developed as the science of human speech.  Within the profession, “langue” & “parole” continue to be regarded as “French words” because the sense in that language better describes things than the English translations (“language” & “speech” respectively) which are “approximate but inadequate”.  Langue denotes the system (or totality) of language shared by the “collective consciousness” so it encompasses all elements of a language as well as the rules & conventions for their combination (grammar, spelling, syntax etc).  Parole is the use individuals make of the resources of language, which the system produces and combines in speech, writing or other means of transmission.  As de Saussure explained it, the conjunction and interaction of the two create an “antinomy of the social and shared”, a further antinomy implied in the idea that langae is abstract and parole is concrete.

The construct of the noun antinomy was a learned borrowing from the Latin antinom(ia) + the English suffix “-y” (used to form abstract nouns denoting a condition, quality, or state).  The Latin antinomia was from the Ancient Greek ἀντινομία (antinomía), the construct being ἀντι- (anti- (the prefix meaning “against”), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European hent- (face; forehead; front)) + νόμος (nómos) (custom, usage; law, ordinance) from  νέμω (némō) (to deal out, dispense, distribute), from the primitive Indo-European nem- (to distribute; to give; to take))  + -ῐ́ᾱ (-íā) (the suffix forming feminine abstract nouns).  The English word is best understood as anti- (in the sense of “against”) +‎ -nomy (the suffix indicating a system of laws, rules, or knowledge about a body of a particular field).  In law, it was once used to describe “a contradiction within a law, or between different laws or a contradiction between authorities” (a now archaic use) but by extension it has come to be used in philosophy, political science and linguistics to describe “any contradiction or paradox”.  A sophisticated deconstruction of the concept was provided by the German German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) who in Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason (1781)) explained that apparent contradictions between valid conclusions (a paradox) could be resolved once it was understood the two positions came from distinct and exclusive sets, meaning no paradox existed, the perception of one merely the inappropriate application of an idea from one set to another.

So langue is what people use when thinking and conceptualizing (abstract) while parole what they use in speaking or writing (concrete), Saussure’s evaluative distinction explained as “The proper object of linguistic study is the system which underlies any particular human signifying human practice, not the individual utterance.” and the implication of that was that langue is of more importance than parole.  In the English-speaking world, it was the work of US Professor Noam Chomsky (b 1928) which made the concept of langue & parole well-known through his use of the more accessible terms “competence” & “performance”.  Chomsky’s latter day role as a public intellectual (though a barely broadcasted one in his home country) commenting on matters such as US foreign policy or the contradictions of capitalism has meant his early career in linguistics is often neglected by those not in the profession (the highly technical nature of the stuff does mean it’s difficult for most to understand) but his early work truly was revolutionary.

Noam Chomsky agitprop by Shepard Fairey (b 1970) on Artsy.

Chomsky used “competence” to refer to a speaker's implicit knowledge of the rules and principles of a language, something which permits them to understand and generate grammatically correct sentences which can be understood by those with a shared competence.  Competence is the idealized, internalized system of linguistic rules that underlies a speaker's ability to produce and comprehend language. It reflects one’s mental grammar, independent of external factors like memory limitations or social context.  Performance refers to the actual use of language IRL (in real life), influenced by psychological and physical factors such as memory, attention, fatigue, and social context.  Performance includes the errors, hesitations, and corrections that occur in everyday speech and Chomsky made the important point these do not of necessity reveal lack of competence.  Indeed, understood as “disfluencies”, (the “ums & ahs” et al) these linguistic phenomenon turned out to be elements it was essential to interpolate into the “natural language” models used to train AI (artificial intelligence) (ro)bots to create genuinely plausible “human analogues”.  Chomsky argued competence should be the primary domain of inquiry for theoretical linguistics and he focused on these abstract, universal principles in his early work which provoked debates which continue to this day.  Performance, subject to errors, variability and influenced by non-linguistic factors, he declared better studied by those in fields like sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics.