ForegroundingForegrounding前景化前景化Definitions and concepts Foreground is a term usually used in art, having opposite meaning to background. Its a very general principle of artistic communication that a work of art in some way deviates from norms which we have learnt. Anyone who wishes to investigate the significance and value of a work of art must concentrate on the element of interest and surprise, rather than on the automatic pattern. Such deviations from linguistic or other socially accepted norms are labeled foregrounding. (Leech,1968: 57). In stylistics Foregrounding in stylistics is a term borrowed from the Prague School of Linguistics, which is used by Leech and Short (1981: 48) to refer to artistically motivated deviation. Foregrounding has its origin with the Czech theorist Jan Mukarovsk: it is Mukarovsks original term, aktualisace, was rendered in English by his first translator (Mukarovsk, 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). The immediate effect of foregrounding is to make strange (ostranenie 陌生化), to achieve defamiliarization. Shklovsky saw defamiliarization as accompanied by feeling: he noted, more precisely, that stylistic devices in literary texts emphasize the emotional effect of an expression (Shklovsky, 1917/1965, p. 9). And, Mukarovsk concurs, When used poetically, words and groups of words evoke a greater richness of images and feelings than if they were to occur in a communicative utterance (1977, p. 73). Examples: 1. Sillitoes text Now youd think, and Id think, and everybody with a bit of imagination would think, that wed done as clean a job as could ever be done, that with the bakers 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 werent more than five minutes in the place, that the coppers should never have been able to trace us. But then, youd be wrong, Id be wrong and everybody else would be wrong, no matter how much imagination was diced out between us. a) The recursion of clauses, mainly through co-ordination, with similar or uniformity structure.Now youd think, and Id think, and everybody with a bit of imagination would think, that wed done as clean a job as could ever be done, that with the bakers shop being at least a mile from where we lived, and withnot a soul having seen us, and what with the fog and the fact that we werent more than five minutes in the place, that the coppers should never have been able to trace us. But then, youd be wrong, Id be wrong and everybody else would be wrong, no matter how much imagination was diced out between us.b) The distribution of clauses in groups of threes, producing a striking pattern of parallelisms and symmetrical structure.c) The third factor is lexical repetition in the co-ordinated units; the effect produced by the recursion on the syntactic level can be said to be reinforced by the repetition of the lexical items. 7OverregularityvDefinition:therepetitionofcertainlinguisticunitsofatextandinparallelism,wheresomefeaturesvarywhileothersarekeptconstant.Namely,itincludesrepetitionandparallelism.vRepetitionisrestrictedtomeanthecaseofexactcopyingofacertainpreviousunitinatext,suchasword,phraseorevenasentence,whichincludesimmediaterepetitionandintermittentrepetition.8vImmediaterepetition:therepeatedunitimmediatelyfollowtheinitialunit.vForexample:vDonotgogentlyintothatgoodnight,vOldageshouldburnandraveatcloseofday,vRage,rageagainstthedyingoflight.vNotes:Rageisrepeatedseveraltimesinthispoem,thusgreatemphasisisattachedontheitem,andalsoonthewholethemeofthepoem:oneshouldstruggleviolentlyagainstdeath.9Example2vGold!Gold!Gold!Gold!vBrightandyellow,hardandcold,vMolten,graven,hammerdandrolld,vHeavytogetandlighttohold.v“Gold”isrepeatedfourtimesandreinforcedbythecapitalizationofthefirstletterandexcalmationmark.Itimplicatespoetsgreatintensityoffeelingwhentalkingaboutgold.10B.IntermittentrepetitionvDefinition:therepeatedpartsareseparatedbywords,phrasesorsentences.vO,howthatnamebefitsmycomposition,vOldGauntindeed,andgauntinbeingold.vHerethespeakerispunningonhisownname.Therepetitionherevividlycapturestheemotionalstateofspeaker:hisutterdespairofhisoldageandhishealthcondition.112ParallelismvDefinition:Aparallelismusessimilarstructuresinseparatesentencestoexpressrelatedideasandwithwhichthesentenceisemphaticandforceful.Inparallelstructureitisnecessarytobalancewordforword,phraseforphrase,clauseforclauseandsentenceforsentence. vType:large-scaleandsmall-scaleparallelism12A.Large-scaleparallelismvDefinition:thekindwhichconsistsofmorethantwojuxtaposedunits.vMyheartleapsupwhenIbeholdvArainbowinthesky,vSowasitwhenmylifebegan;vSowasitnowIamaman;vSobeitwhenIshallgrowold,vOrletmedie!vThechildisfatheroftheMan;vAndIcouldwishmydaystobevBoundeachtoeachbynaturalpiety.(Wordsworth)13ExplainInthispoem,thepoethassuccessfullyexpressedhisgreatreverencefornaturewhichgoesbeyondtheboundsofthepast,presentandfuture.Thethemeisbroughtoutchieflybytheparallelismwhichexistsinlines3,4and5.Firstly,thesamenessofstructureimpliesthesamenessinmeaning.Thisshowsthatthespeakerhopesthathisresponsetoseeingarainbowremainsthesamethroughoutthelife.Secondlyandmoreimportantly,theemotionalfeelingexpressedgetsstrongeraftereachjuxtaposedunit,reachingitsclimaxinthefinalparallelunit.14B.Thesmall-scaleparallelismvDefinition:thecasewhichconsistsofonlytwojuxtaposedunits.Intraditionalrhetoricissometimescalledantithesis.Toerrishuman,toforgivedivine.O,myluveislikeared,redrose.ThatsnewlysprunginJune.O,myluveislikethemelodieThatssweetlyplaydintune.End Thank you！