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Stylistics Foregrounding PDF
Stylistics Foregrounding PDF
• The term foregrounding has its origin with the Czech theorist
Jan Mukarovský: it is how Mukarovský's original term,
aktualisace, was rendered in English by his first translator
(Mukarovský, 1932/1964). It refers to the range of stylistic
effects that occur in literature, whether at the phonetic
level (e.g., alliteration, rhyme), the grammatical level (e.g.,
inversion, ellipsis), or the semantic level (e.g., metaphor,
irony).
• As Mukarovský pointed out, foregrounding may occur in
normal, everyday language, such as spoken discourse or
journalistic prose, but it occurs at random with no systematic
design. In literary texts, on the other hand, foregrounding
is structured: it tends to be both systematic and hierarchical.
That is, similar features may recur, such as a pattern of
assonance or a related group of metaphors, and one set of
features will dominate the others (Mukarovský, 1964, p. 20),
a phenomenon that Jakobson termed "the dominant" (1987,
pp. 41-46).
1. Sillitoe’s text
Now you’d think, and I’d think, and everybody with a bit of
imagination would think, that we’d done as clean a job as could
ever be done, that with the baker’s shop being at least a mile
from where we lived, and with not a soul having seen us, and
what with the fog and the fact that we weren’t more than five
minutes in the place, that the coppers should never have been
able to trace us. But then, you’d be wrong, I’d be wrong and
everybody else would be wrong, no matter how much
imagination was diced out between us.
1. Foregrounding in Sillitoe’s text
(α1) Now you’d think, and I’d think, and everybody with a bit of
imagination would think, that we’d done as clean a job as could ever be
done, that (β1) with the baker’s shop being at least a mile from where
we lived, (β2) and with not a soul having seen us, (β3) and what with the
fog and the fact that we weren’t more than five minutes in the place, that
the coppers should never have been able to trace us. (α2) But then,
you’d be wrong, (α3) I’d be wrong (α4) and everybody else would be
wrong, (β4) no matter how much imagination was diced out between us.
The impression the reader gets when reading this passage is that of a
cleverly structured text which effectively recounts an experience. Its
effectiveness and vividness are due in great measure to the following
factors:
α2 ⎡ You’d be wrong ⎤
α3 ⎢ I’d be wrong ⎟
α4 ⎣ and everybody…wrong ⎦
β4 No matter…between us
α1 → β1 + β2 + β3
α2 + α3 + α4 → β4,
where:
β4 - SPA: no matter…us