FOREGROUNDING

LECTURE 2
 1. Psychological aspects of the term
foregrounding;
2. Linguistic sense of the term foregrounding;
3. Forms of foregrounding: deviation and
Road parallelism
map 4. Deviation at different levels of language
5. Deviation at phonological level
6. Parallelism at phonological level
7. Deviation at graphological level
 The property of perceptual
The term prominence that certain things
FOREGROUNDING have against the backdrop of
other, less noticeable (Gregoriou 2014: 87)
 bright vs. dull colours

Foregrounding
manifests as a
psychological
effect (1)
 foregrounded Size and central
position of words and
objects

Foregrounding
manifests as a
psychological backgrounded
Distracting from
effect (2) small print,
bottom of
designs
 Disclaimer “ENJOY WITH ABSOLUT RESPONSIBILITY”

Foregrounding
manifests as a
psychological
effect (3)
Foregrounding
manifests as a
psychological
effect (4)
 The top half of pages The page’s right half
‘ideal’ information Information is
FOREGROUNDED foregrounded (new infm.)
Foregrounding
manifests as a
psychological
effect (5)

Kress and van

Leeuwen (1998) Bottom half of pages
newspaper ‘real’ information
BACKGROUNDED
front pages
LINGUISTIC (and
literary) sense of A form of textual patterning which is
the term motivated specifically for literary-
aesthetic purposes (Simpson 2004: 50)
FOREGROUNDING
 It involves a stylistic distortion of some sort:
Forms of  either through an aspect of the text which
linguistic deviated from a linguistic norm
foregrounding  or, alternatively, where the aspect of the text is
brought to the fore through repetition or
at any level of parallelism (Simpson 2004: 5)
language
deviation
the act of moving away parallelism
from what is normal or the state of being similar
acceptable
 Phonology; phonetics
Levels of language
 The sound of spoken Lexical analysis; lexicology
language; the way words are  The words we use; the
Deviation and pronounced vocabulary of language
parallelism Graphology Semantics
 The patterns of written  The meaning of words and
can take place language; the shape of sentences
language on the page
on a number of Morphology
Pragmatics; discourse
analysis
 The way words are  The way words and
linguistic constructed; words and their sentences are used in
levels constituent structures everyday situations; the
meaning of language in
Syntax; grammar
context
 The way words combine with
other words to form phrases
and sentences
DEVIATION
 External
When a text deviates Internal
from norms set Violation of
Deviation outside it in relation
to its context ,
secondary norms, i.e.
those that the text
violation of primary itself has set
norms
 The genre of
Examples taglines:
1) Advertise the film
Examples from Christiana Gregoriou (2014) by telling sth
Based on about its content
-Taglines (slogans) from the films 2) Usually
grammatically
non-standard
 From the brother of the director of the Ghost
External  The slogan is externally deviant in that it is
deviation unexpected and unique.
the film Naked Does it tell about the content?
Gun 33 1/3: The
Final Insult  In keeping with the witty tone of the film, it is
(1994) mocking itself: the director being closely
related to an assumedly more famous one,
humorously suggests that the actual director
is not as good as the one who made the film
Ghost.
 A tale of murder, lust, greed, revenge, and seafood
 Internally deviant on the lexical / semantic
Internal level:
deviation /  Listing five nouns in a row with the word
deviance ‘seafood’ being incongruous in this context.
A Fish Called  Why?
Wanda  It does not fit the crime narrative schema
(1988) created by the other listed words
 Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas.
Syntactically and
Simple semantically paralleled
Internal adjective
in listing three adj.
phrases;
Adjectival verbal followed by a
deviation participles with postomifying
The last expr. is
postmodifying semantically and
prepositional grammatically deviant:
prepositional phrase
Army of phrases The first two expr. –
metaphorical in
Darkness concretising ‘time’ and
(1992) ‘evil’. The last expr. –
only orientational
metaphor ‘low gas’ (a
literal or a figurative lack
of fuel / energy);
Grammatically different.
PHONOLOGICAL
DEVIATION
  Irregularities in the way in which words
are pronounced;
Phonological Assonan
deviation r at i on ce
Alli te
(phonic)
Onomatopoeia
hy m e
R
 And Darkness, and Decay.
And the Red Death
Held dominion over all. (Edgar Allan Poe)

Alliteration  Repetition of the same consonant or

consonant clusters in meaningful words in
strongly stressed position.
 And Darkness, and Decay.
And the Red Death
Held dominion over all. (Edgar Allan Poe)

Alliteration  Repetition of the same consonant or

consonant clusters in meaningful words in
strongly stressed position.
 Every breath we breathe is the
Alliteration breath of plants, which
supports all life. 
 Every breath we breathe is the
Alliteration breath of plants, which
supports all life. 
  Repetition of the same vowel sound.

 With his delights, for when tired out with fun,

Assonance   He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
 (John Keats (17951821) “On the Grasshopper and Cricket”)
 With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
Assonance He rests at ease beneath some pleasant
weed. (John Keats (17951821) “On the Grasshopper
and Cricket”)
Assonance Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
(Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night")
  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Assonance Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
(Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good
night")
 Newspapers:
The Great Kate Wait

Assonance
Assonance
 Imitation of natural
sounds
Onomatopoeia Functions:
have an effect on the readers’
senses;
emphasis
 Bees are …
humming.
In Lithuanian?
Onomatopoeia
 Flies are …
buzzing.
Onomatopoeia
 Snakes are …
hissing.

Onomatopoeia
 Cuckoos say …
cuckoo.

Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia 1. meow (AmE), 1. an unhappy cat
Match the sound
to the feeling. miaow (BrE) 2. an angry cat
2.mew 3. a content and
3. purr happy cat
4. a cat wants
4.yowl /jaʊl/ something
5.hiss
 1. meow (AmE), 1. a cat wants
miaow (BrE) / something
Onomatopoei mew 2. a content and
a happy cat
2.purr
3. an unhappy cat
3. yowl /jaʊl/ 4. an angry cat
4.hiss
 plop, growl,
 sounds of
 splash, giggle,
a) water gush, grunt,
b) human sprinkle, murmur,
voice drizzle, blurt,
drip. chatter
 On the air. Unaware.

Rhyme

The Truman Air – unaware

Show rhyming
(1998)
 Bob Dylan 
"for having created new poetic expressions within
the great American song tradition".
The Nobel
Prize in
Literature
2016 was
awarded to
  Irregularities in the way in which words
are pronounced;
Phonological n
Assonan
ce
te r at i o
deviation Alli

Onomatopoeia
hy m e
R
PARALLELISM
  It has ‘the power not just to foreground
parts of a text for us, but also to make us
Parallelism look for parallel or contrastive meaning
links between those parallel parts’ (Short
1996: 15)
  Introduction of extra regularities, not
irregularities, into the language (Leech 1969: 62)

Phonological parallelism:
Parallelism The repetition on the level of sound

 Alliteration, assonance and rhyme are not

only classes of deviation but also of
parallelism (Short 1996)
 Whoever wins, we lose.

The Alien vs.

Predator Phonologically paralleled:
(2004)  Assonance (repetition of /i/)
 Alliteration (repetition of /w/)
GRAPHOLOGICAL
DEVIATION
  Arrangement of words on the
printed page
Graphological  The use of punctuation
deviation  Spacing
 Capitalization
 Etc.
Nicolle Krauss
 Once, it was a long time ago, I found Bruno lying in the
middle of the living room floor next to an empty bottle of pills.
He’d dad enough. All he wanted was to sleep forever. Taped to
Capitalization his chest was a note with three words: GOODBYE, MY LOVES.
I shouted out. NO, BRUNO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! I
slapped his face. At last his eyes fluttered open. His gaze was
blank and dull. WAKE UP, YOU DUMKOP! I shouted. LISTEN TO
ME NOW: YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP! His eyes drifted closed
again. I dialled 911. I filled a bowl with cold water and threw it
on him. I put my ear to his heart. Far off, a vague rustle. The
ambulance came. At the hospital they pumped his stomach.
Why did you take all those pills? the doctor asked. Bruno, sick,
exhausted, coolly raised his eyes. WHY DO YOU THINK I TOOK
ALL THOSE PILLS? He shrieked. The recovery room turned
silent; everyone stared. Bruno groaned and turned toward the
wall. That night I put him to bed. Bruno, I said. So sorry, he
said. So selfish. I sighed and turned to go. Stay with me! he
cried.
Spacing

Nicolle
Krauss The
History of
Love
Spacing

Nicolle
Krauss The
History of
Love
Spacing

Nicolle
Krauss The
History of
Love
Arrangement
of words on
the printed
page

E.E.
Cummings,
an American
poet
(1894-1962)
  Samuel Beckett (
 “I see me on my face close my eyes not
the blue the others at the back and see
me on my face the mouth opens the
Punctuation tongue comes out lolls in the mud and
no questions of thirst either no
147 pages with… question of dying of thirst either all
zero punctuation this time vast stretch of time” (How It Is, pp.
marks. 8-9)
  A prominent figure from the Modernist Literature movement

Punctuation Gertrude Stein

 the comma is “a poor period that lets you
stop and take a breath but if you want to
take a breath you ought to know yourself
that you want to take a breath.”

 “Punctuation is necessary only for the

feeble-minded.”
 War is hell... But peace is f *#%!! boring

Spelling
Externally graphologically
deviant:
The Buffalo  Unconventional spelling of a
Soldiers (2001) taboo word;
  The norm violation rarely occurs on
one linguistic level alone, but mostly
takes place on a number of different
Conclusions
levels simultaneously, not to
mention that it also interacts with
various forms of parallelism.