Foregrounding

Have you heard of the term foregrounding? If not, don't worry! We will explore the meaning of foregrounding in English and take a look at some examples in literature. We will also consider foregrounding techniques; parallelism and deviation.

• Grammatical level

  • inversion

  • Ellipsis

• Phonetic level

  • alliteration

  • Rhyme

• Semantic level

  • Metaphor

  • Irony

In Dylan Thomas's elegy 'A Grief Ago' (1935), the figure of grief is 'She', the 'rose maid' or 'masted venus' who stands foregrounded against a backdrop filled with imagery such as the tower, the sea, and the sun. The grief Thomas experiences is focused on the figure of 'She'.

The title of 'A grief ago' is doubly foregrounded. Grief is an emotional word rather than a marker of time (such as week or day), and so appears grammatically incorrect. The grammatical inconsistency makes the word stand out. Dylan Thomas asks us to think about measuring time through emotions. Foregrounding, however, is not as simple as contrasting a figure with its background. Specific words in literature are also used to show contrast and estrangement.

Foregrounding techniques

The foregrounding techniques include any stylistic distortion of some sort, 'either through an aspect of the text which deviates from a linguistic norm or, alternatively, where an aspect of the text is brought to the fore through repetition or parallelism.'¹( Azam Esmaeili, 2013). Parallelism and deviation are used to call your attention to the strangeness of a word or a character's actions in a literary work. Foregrounding is achieved by these techniques.

Parallelism repeats content with unexpected regularity. It is the repetition of sounds, meanings, structures, and grammatical elements in writing and speaking to emphasise relations between aspects of the text. Sometimes, parallelism appears in single words which have slight variations of meaning such as 'bend' and 'curve', or 'climb' and 'ascent' for thematic emphasis. At other times, it is a literary device that creates parallel positions between opposite ideas. Parallelism can be inverted for stronger emphasis in sentences and plots.

Example Two: AR Ammons's Small Song (1990) shows parallelism in enjambment and the play of 'give way' with 'give away'.

Example Three: James Baldwin's speech 'As Much Truth as One Can Bear' in 1962.

Parallelism is considered under the category of figures of speech. The technique takes forms such as:

• Anaphora

• Antithesis

• Asyndeton

• Epistrophe

And many others. The effect of the repeated phrase in a poem or work of fiction emphasizes the development of the work's content through identical phrases and subtle or overt changes to that phrase. Thus, the text is foregrounded by the repeated patterns, and these emphasize the modifications of the repeated phrases.

Deviation is the setting up, and the deliberate breaking of, established patterns of language or sound. In poetry, deviations frequently occur in rhythm, rhyme, stanza layout, and any images or symbols which look out of place. Deviation is an unexpected irregularity of words, metaphors, and character development which work to enhance the reader's sense of dislocation from the literary work. Deviation violates rules and conventions.

Hopkins uses the prefix 'un' to create new words not normally used in Standard English. Such a rule break is further emphasized by the previous line's multiple uses of internal rhyme ('wi-ry' and 'fie-ry') and the alliteration of 'w'. The 'w' sounds different from the 'u' which shows the unsettling deviation visually and sonically. Thus, the unchilding and unfathering has a more dramatic impact in the stanza. The word is placed in the foreground to emphasize its significance in the poem.

• Grammatical - either morphological or syntactic (ie. Bad grammar or syntax rearrangement).
• Lexical - playing with word meanings and definitions to create new words (such as Hopkin's unchilding and TS Eliot's foresuffered in 'The Wasteland' (1922).
• Phonological - how language and sounds are affected by omissions or dialect spellings.
• Think of your favorite rap or hip-hop song. How do they use wordplay and sounds to deviate from normal conventions of mainstream music?
• Semantic - the play of meaning, with a frequent exploration of absurdity and nonsense (such as William Wordsworth's 'The child is father of the man' in 'My Heart Leaps Up' (1807).
• Textual - how text is affected by the deviation.
• Graphological - visual patterning of words, punctuation, or the poem itself.
• Dialectal - the borrowing of features of regional or social dialects / slang (think of Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982) and the use of African American Vernacular English, or Ebonics). This, too, relies on linguistics.
• Register - Register is a 'language variety used by a particular group of people who share the same occupation.' Register mixing as a register deviation.
• Carol Ann Duffy's poem 'Poet for Our Times (1990) features a mix of dramatic monologue, to informal colloquial register, and newspaper headlines typical associated with the British tabloid press:' CECIL Keays ROW SHOCK TELLS EYETIE WAITER '.
• Historical period - genre mixing or using archaic expressions of words in modern contexts, or vice versa.

External vs. internal deviations

Deviation is distinguished by the reader's response to certain language use and linguistic structure. External and internal deviations are deviations from some norm which is internal or external to the text. External and internal deviations are best seen in poetry. Any word, phrase, or sound that deviates from the norm is foregrounding.

External deviation

External deviation is when the author or poet breaks from the normal conventions of language use - such as sentences that are not grammatically correct or the use of nonsense words. The Dylan Thomas example of 'A Grief Ago' is an example of an external deviation because the poet's choice of 'grief' in the title deviates from normal poetic word and grammar choices.

Internal deviation

Example: Edward Estlin Cummings's poetry uses lower-case initials irrespective of whether a new line begins a new sentence or not. He also styles his name as ee cummings in his poetic works. Cummings' works frequently deviate from the normal conventions of English language use as you see in the extract of his poem 'i carry your heart with me (i carry it in)':

However, Cummings uses occasional capitals or upper case-initials as a deviation from his own 'norm', as seen in his poem 'Buffalo Bill's' (1920) which is a critique of hero worship:

The Jesus and Mister Death are capitalized as an internal deviation in Cumming's poem. The placement of Jesus appears as an exclamation to express amazement or anger. The placement might also be Cummings playing with the meaning of the religious figure of Jesus, who is foregrounded above Buffalo Bill and Mister Death. The ambiguity is nevertheless there to be challenged and noticed. Cummings uses foregrounding in many of his poems.