4. The notion and types of foregrounding

Foregrounding is the ability of a verbal element to obtain extra significance to say more in a definite context. This notion was put forward by Prague linguists. Foregrounding was formulated in the sphere of the language of literature. When a word, affix or sentence is automatized by the long use in speech through context developments it may obtain some new additional features. This act resembles background phenomenon moving into the front line. A contextually foregrounded element carries more information than when taken in isolation. It is possible to say that in context it is loaded with some basic information inherently belonging to it plus an acquired adherent information. It is the latter which is responsible for the well-known fact that a sentence always means more than the sum of the meanings of its components. So, stylistic analysis involves subtle procedures of finding foregrounded elements and indicating the chemistry of contextual changes.

Types of foregrounding:

1. convergence;

2. coupling;

3. breach of predictability, or the defeated expectancy effect.

Convergence is concentration in one place of the text, a cluster of stylistic devices and expressive means performing one and the same stylistic functions. A stylistic device is not attached to this or that stylistic effect. The author uses different devices for the same purpose, because this redundancy ensures the delivery of the author’s idea. For example: When he blinks, a parrot-like look appears, the look of some heavily blinding tropical bird.

Coupling is the recurrence of similar elements of the text in similar position which provides the unity of a poetic structure. To such elements we refer rhyme, rhythm, lexical and syntactical repetition.

Breach of predictability has a linear character. It means that each new element is predetermined by the preceding one, which, in its turn, serves to presuppose the next one. Thus, the reader can predict the appearance of a new element. This process is done mechanically and without interruption until there appears an element of low predictability. So, the reader stops and tries to perceive this element. The reader’s attention is, thus, arrested and the element becomes prominent and catches the reader’s eye.

5. Meaning from a stylistic point of view (lexical meaning, grammatical meaning)

Words of the language possess lexical and grammatical meanings. Both of these meanings make up the semantic structure of the word. Lexical and grammatical meanings are interdependent; one can’t go without the other.

Even an isolated word is presented in a dictionary with the reference to its grammatical meaning. In the dictionary you may see the part-of-speech reference to its grammatical meaning and some of its paradigms. Grammatical meaning, thus, is a structural meaning. It expresses in speech the relations between words, based on the contrastive features of arrangements in which they occur.

There are no words which are deprived of grammatical meaning. Even units larger than words possess their grammatical meaning. For example, sentences have their structural meaning of affirmation, interrogation and negation.

Lexical meaning, on the contrary, can’t be said to belong to all the word-stock. There are words possessing no lexical meaning of their own. Here we may refer functional words: prepositions (which serve to signify the relations between words), exclamations, interjections. Notional words and phrases made of them possess lexical meaning.

According to I. V. Arnold, lexical meaning is the realization of some concept or emotion by means of a definite language system. This meaning refers our mind to some concrete object, phenomenon or concept (whether real or imaginative). There are words possessing several lexical meanings.

However, in actual speech a word can acquire occasional new meanings. Such meanings are not considered as components of the semantic structure of the word. These occasional meanings appear due to a certain context. That is why they are called contextual meanings.

The grammatical meaning is more abstract than the lexical one. But the lexical meaning depends, to some extent, on the grammatical meaning. For example, lexical meaning may depend on the part-of-speech characteristic or on the syntactic function of a word in the sentence.

Lexical meaning is segmented into connotative and denotative meanings.