A Stylistic Study On The Foregrounded Features In Langston Hughes’s Poetry

African-American writer Langston Hughes, who was honored with the informal title“the Poet Laureate of the Black”, produced a host of works concerning racial inequality andthe black culture during the period between the1920’s and the1960’s. By now, LangstonHughes’s works, especially the poetry has caused tremendous repercussions and profoundreflection among contemporary scholars. In this day and age quite a great number of literaryscholars at home and abroad have conducted research on Langston Hughes’s poetry throughtraditional approaches, focusing on the themes of dreams, freedom, racial discrimination, etc.However few of them study the foregrounded features of poetic language itself. This thesisattempts to employ the theory of foregrounding to study the foregrounded features ofLangston Hughes’s poems in hopes of providing objective and balanced insights for moreaccurate interpretation.Through concentrating on the abnormalities of poetic language, this thesis attempts toapply the general principles of foregrounding theory to illustrate linguistic irregularities ofsurface structure and deep structure. Linguistic deviation in surface structure, which affectsexternal form and articulation of language, primarily constitutes phonological, graphological,lexical and grammatical deviation. In contrast, linguistic deviation in deep structure, whichinfluences the implicit and explicit meanings of language, is frequently found in variousrhetorical devices, including absurdity, transference, honest deceptions and ambiguity.Through in-depth analysis of selected poems, it’s demonstrated that linguistic deviation canbe interpreted with examples from phonological, graphological, lexical and grammaticalcategories, and that linguistic violation is an indispensable device to produce foregroundingeffect.According to A Stylistic Study on English Poetry (Yu Xueyong2007), linguisticoverregularity, the other essential approach to realizing foregrounding, is of pivotalimportance in the appreciation and mastery of poetry. Thus it’s necessary to make acomprehensive analysis of linguistic overregularity in phonological, lexical and grammaticalaspects at length. More specifically, phonological overregularity lays stress on the analysis ofsound patterning comprising alliteration, assonance, and rhyme. In addition, the devices ofrepetition and parallelism to realize lexical and grammatical overregularity are amplyanalyzed in combination with Langston Hughes’s poems. Through the application of appropriate examples and logical interpretation based on foregrounding theory, the readerscould better understand the application and functions of foregrounding.This thesis conducts a detailed study on the foregrounded linguistic features inLangston Hughes’s poetry, including deviation and overregularity in phonological,graphological, lexical and grammatical aspects. The deliberate illustration with examples notonly provides audiences with a comparatively objective method to appreciate literature, butalso enables the readers to better understand the writing techniques of poetry and the writingstyle of poet. Due to the irreplaceable advantages of foregrounding, it will be the trend that arising number of literary critics enthusiastically conduct scrupulous observations onlinguistic deviation and overregularity for future interpretation of literature.