Foregrounding Of ELD Style:A Refined Model

Under the guidance of foregrounding theory,this thesis first off discusses the conception and possible classifications of the foregrounding of English Learners Dictionary(ELD)'s style.It is argued in this paper that the foregrounding of ELD style refers to things that are perceptual prominence in ELD style and can be principally classified as foregrounding in extralinguistic and intralinguistic aspects in ELD style.Extralinguistically,foregrounding happens in the font color,font size,geometrical signs and the illustrations;while intralinguistically,it happens in the headword,pronunciation,definition and example in ELD.Then,to explain the method of foregrounding,certain authoritative ELDs are taken as the example ELD to serve this purpose.Analyzed in this paper,there are mainly two methods: deviation and parallelism,the former being the perceptually prominent parts in ELD;the latter being the repetition of certain mechanisms in ELD.In order to study the motivation of foregrounded stylistic elements in ELD,the Figure-Ground theory by Talmy is borrowed and we come up with the exterior and interior motivation,one referring to the scientific aspect and the convenience to compilers,the other referring to the effect to English learners.To investigate the effect,a questionnaire is conducted with the findings that the Figure(the perceptually prominent parts)in the foregrounding of ELD style is not in consistent with the figure(the psychologically prominent parts)of different English learners.As a solution,in the end,we propose several refined means for a better model of the foregrounding of ELD style.These methodologies are used: 1.literature,served as literature review;2.analogical reasoning,applied to when the term dictionary style is defined in accordance with the term style is defined in stylistics;3.questionnaire,conducted to find out the preference for ELD style of English learners.