Foregrounding may occur in normal, everyday
language, such as spoken discourse or journalistic prose, but it occurs at
random with no systematic design. But in literary texts, on the other hand,
foregrounding is structured. The immediate effect of foregrounding is to make
strange to achieve defamiliarization. When used poetically, words and groups of
words evoke a greater richness of images and feelings than if they were to
occur in a talkative expression.
Foreground is a term usually used in art,
having opposite meaning to background. "Foregrounding" means "to bring to
the front." The term foregrounding has its origin with
the Czech theorist Jan Mukarovsky 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, abbreviation, or the semantic
level e.g., metaphor, irony.
The most common
means employed by the writers is repetition. Our attention is immediately captivated by the
repetition of the sounds of certain words or by the words they and we begin to
analyse the reasons why the writer is repeating this particular sound or word. In the tongue twister, "she sells sea
shells on the sea shore" it is plain that 'S' and 'Sh' are foregrounded
for their euphonic effect.
Verdonk states that foregrounding is the
psychological effect a literary reader has as s/he is reading a work of
literature. It is generally used to
highlight important parts of a text, to aid memo capacity and or to invite interpretation.
In foregrounding the writer uses the
sounds of words or the words themselves in such a way that the readers'
attention is immediately captivated.
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