Foregrounding

Foregrounding means the ways of text organization which concentrate the reader’s attention on certain elements of utterance and establish semantically important relations between the text elements of one or different levels. Text analysis includes the analysis of the foregrounded features (or parts) of the text. The foregrounded features (M.Short) are the parts of the text which the author, consciously or subconsciously, is signaling as significant to our understanding what he (she) has written.

The major functions of foregrounding are:

1) to emphasize the most important parts of utterance;

2) to ensure cohesion and integrity of the text and, at the same time, to establish links between the text parts and the whole text;

3) to create aesthetic context, to give expressiveness to the text components.

The main types of foregrounding are stylistic convergence (the term of M.Riffaterre), effect of defeated expectancy (R.Jakobson), coupling (S.Levin). Convergence is the combination, or accumulation of different stylistic devices in a text fragment, as for example, in E.Hemingway’s essay “On the American Dead in Spain” or the speech “I have a Dream” by M.L.King. It is important to note that convergences are difficult to render into the target language, and according to the German scientist E. Frey, it is exactly in those parts of the text which include stylistic convergences that we can see the biggest differences between the original and the translation.

The effect of defeated expectancy means the appearance of the unpredictable element in the utterance, as in the poem “November” by T.Hood:

No sun – no moon!

No morn – no noon!

No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day – No sky – no earthly view

***

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds.

November.

The third type of foregrounding – coupling – involves the appearance of indentical elements in identical positions. Coupling can be realized in different types of repetitions (phonetical, syntactical), parallel constructions, as in proverbs: Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

The British scientist M.Short defines foregrounding as the result of deviation from linguistic (and non-linguistic) norms of various kinds. e.g. – “The Forgettle” – an advertisement for a brand of electric kettles which switches itself off automatically when the water boils). 2 types of deviation can be singled out – external and internal. External deviation is the deviation from some norm which is external to the text, such as genre norms, period norms, e.g. archaic words in modern English – like “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by E.Hemingway. Internal deviation is the deviation from a norm set up by the text itself.

3 Text is a system in which all units are interconnected. There are certain pats in any text which have special significance for understanding the idea of the text. That is why all language units in these parts acquire special importance. Such parts are called strong positions . Strong positions include the title, the epigraph, the beginning and the end of the text. The epigraph is not an obligatory text element, it is found mainly in fiction and publicistic texts.

The title is the first sign of the text. One of its major functions is to attract the reader’s attention, to establish the contact with the reader. There are different classification of titles. One of them was suggested by the Russian scientist Syrov (2002).