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.
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.
