The Prospect Of The Phenomenon Of Poetic Language

Foregrounding, a crucial concept of stylistics, was originally derived from painting. It was later adopted in the stylistic analysis as important means for analyzing and interpreting literary works, especially poems.At first, this paper clarifies the concept of foregrounding and explains theories and approaches that are adopted in this paper. Chapter Two gives an account of historical background and evolution of foregrounding from"defamiliarization"of Russian Formalism to the present. Chapter Three provides a careful linguistic description of foregrounding on various levels of language. However, not all deviation and parallelism are foregrounding. In order to distinguish the true foregrounding from mere prominence, this paper adopts Halliday's criteria of relevance meaning that only prominent features that contribute to the subject-matter can be foregrounded. Chapter Four is about the aesthetic effects of foregrounding language. Chapter Five brings foregrounding into the semiotic framework. In this chapter, the author concludes that foregrounded elements have the property of self-reflexivity.Foregrounding in poetry is by no means the accidental practices of poets; it grows out of poets'artful and thematic consideration. The systematic and consistent foregrounding can point to the common direction—the subject, providing indication for the understanding of poetry and therefore has important academic values.