Foregrounding: Deviation,

Choice, and Parallelism

Raed Dakhil Kareem

PhD Candidate, University of Baghdad,
College of Arts, Dept. of English
 1. Foregrounding
Taken as a predominantly literary feature, the term
foregrounding refers to an effect brought about in
the reader by linguistic or other forms of deviation in
the literary text(Leech, 1985:47).
The deviant features of the text, being unexpected,
come to the foreground of reader's attention against
the background of its normal linguistic features.
The Prague School linguists consider foregrounding,
which confers unexpectedness, unusualness and
uniqueness on literary texts, as the differentiating
factor between poetic and non-poetic language
(Mukarovsky, 1958:19).
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They consider the maximization of foregrounding as
the function of poetic language. Leech (1965:68)
analyzes the poem "This Bread I Break" by Dylan
Thomas and recognized the expressions "the oat was
merry", and "broke the sun" in it, figuring in the
stanza quoted below, as foregrounded.
Once in this wind the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The Oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

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In the expression "the Oat was merry ", the noun
which normally has the feature of inanimacy in the
language code is given an animate and more precisely
a human feature in the poetic context, thereby creating
a deviation which is foregrounded against normal
expressions like ''the man was merry'' , ''the teacher
was merry'' etc.

Foregrounding occurs here because the semantic

features of these items in the language code do not
correspond with those which are bestowed upon them
by the contextual environment in which they appear.

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1.1 Factors Contributing to Foregrounding
It is significant that Jan Mukarovsky refers to
foregrounding as "the aesthetically intentional
distortion of the linguistic components."
(Mukarovsky, 1985:18).
This definition signifies two important aspects of
foregrounding:
first, poetic foregrounding , being 'intentional',
presupposes some motivation on the part of the poet
which in turn demands careful attention from the
reader,
and second, distortion of any 'linguistic component'
may bring about foregrounding.
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Thus concentration of any linguistic features -
phonological, syntactic, or semantic - which are
rare or unnoticed in ordinary speech but brought
into prominence deliberately in the literary text
with the purpose of contributing to its total effect
can result in foregrounding.

This "calling of the reader's attention to linguistic

structures", quite different from the way in which
a non-literary writer will emphasize the language
elements, " is an essential part of literary
''creation." (Chapman, 1982:5).

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 1.2. Kinds of Foregrounding
Leech and Short (1981:48) identify two kinds of
foregrounding: qualitative foregrounding and
quantitative foregrounding.
In the former, there is deviation from the rules of the
language code or from the conventions of language
use or both.
In the latter, the deviance is from some expected
frequency of linguistic occurrence and not from the
language code.
When a writer writes he is constantly involved in
making linguistic choices. The choices he makes both
outside and inside the language system may thus lead
to foregrounding. 7
The following extract from James Joyce's Ulysses
exemplifies qualitative foregrounding :

Bob Cowley's outstretched talons gripped the black

deep-sounding chords.

In Ulysses, this sentence describes Bob Cowley who is

playing the piano.
The pianist's hand placed above the keys becomes the
talons of a bird of prey.
It grips not physical objects like table or chair but
''chords''. Further, the description attributes black
color to the ''chords.''

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Joyce here violates selection restrictions prescribed
in the language code by providing a human
possessor for ''talons'', an abstract object for
''grip'', and the modifier ''black'' for an abstract
noun ''chords''.

Joyce thus presents his unique perception of reality,

which may not be sanctioned by society as a whole,
by bestowing on the linguistic elements values other
than they have in the language code.

He combines what is kept separate in the code and

separates what is combined in the code.
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In quantitative foregrounding the writer, instead of
utilizing a wider choice available in the language code,
deliberately restricts himself to a selected pattern to
produce uniformity(Ibid.).

The deviation here is not from the rules of the language

code or from the conventions of language use but from
some expected frequency in normal use where variety
would normally be expected(Leech, Deucher, and
Hoogenraad, 1982:15f.).

Hopkins' short poem "Heaven-Haven", on a nun's

taking the veil, illustrates quantitative foregrounding :
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 I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be

Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.'‘

In both the stanzas, Hopkins restricts himself to the

selection of the same grammatical structure of parallelism.
Thus by superimposing on language the over-regularity of
the same syntactic choice within the language system,
Hopkins achieves foregrounding effect for the poem(Ibid.).

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 1.3 Coherence of Foregrounding
In literary discourse, deviations are not just to be
interpreted in isolation, but to be seen as forming a
meaningful pattern with other linguistic features,
both regular and irregular, to form a whole.
They are understood, therefore, "not in isolation with
reference only to the linguistic system, or code, but
also with reference to the context in which they
appear''(Widdowson, 1975:27).
Inspired by Mukarovsky's observation , Leech
searches for coherence of foregrounded features in a
literary text at two levels (Leech, 1985:50):

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at horizontal level termed as ''cohesion between
deviations'' , and at vertical level termed as
''congruence between deviations''. Leech exemplifies
both concepts with reference to Shelley's "Ode to the
West Wind."
He recognizes cohesion of foregrounding in the
parallelism of the three elements - Earth, Sky, and Sea
- in the first three stanzas. In the fourth stanza, the
same parallelism is resumed in the triple if-clause
structure:

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power,
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The same pattern once again recurs in a variant form in
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
---------------------------------------

The "Ode to the West Wind" also illustrates congruence

of foregrounding by way of "anticipatory structuring"
that takes place at different linguistic levels in the poem,
as in, for instance, hyperbaton(i.e., Hyperbaton refers
to the use of inverted or transposed word order in a
text: for example, placing an adjective after the noun it
qualifies (cities fair) instead of before (fair cities) at the
syntactic level,
and the incompletion of the first three stanzas at the
discourse level contribute to this foregrounding of
anticipation in the poem. 14
 2. Linguistic Deviation
The concept of deviation is important to the study of
literary texts. To be stylistically distinctive, a feature
of language must deviate from some norm of
comparison.
To Leech (Ibid.:40) this norm may be an absolute one,
functioning "for the language as a whole" or a
relative one "provided by some set of texts which for
the purposes of the study are regarded as
comparable."
Levin (1963:277) proposes another distinction, in this
connection, between determinate and statistical
deviations.
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Whereas statistical deviation is a quantitative measure
of linguistic differences between the domain and the
norm, determinate deviation is non-quantitative.

In determinate deviation, the deviation is observed as

a discrepancy between what is allowed by the rules
and conventions of the language system and what
occurs in the text.
It is also possible to consider deviations in literary
texts at three levels( primary, secondary, and tertiary):
''primary deviation'' where the text deviates from
norms of the language as a whole,

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''secondary deviation'' where it deviates from norms
of literary composition in particular, and
''tertiary deviation or internal deviation'' where the
deviation is from norms internal to a text.
---------------------------------------
Primary deviation takes two main forms:
(a) Where the language allows a choice within the
rules of its code and the conventions of its use, the
writer goes outside the choices available.
(b) Where the language allows a choice, the writer
denies himself the freedom to choose, and uses the
same item repeatedly.

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The first category of primary deviation can be
exemplified using the following extract:
:O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Here the deviation is caused by the use of the rare

verb ''chariotest'' and the by the collocational oddity
of ''the wind charioting the seeds to bed.'‘
Consider the figure below:

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19
As the figure shows, 'wind' and 'seeds' do not share
human feature in the language code; the predicator
''chariotest'' attributes these features to them in the
context of the poem. thereby personifying both.
Further, the phrase order

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed / The winged

seeds
S + P + A + O

is abnormal for English which demands the syntactic

organization of Subject + Predicator + Object +
Adverbial. Thus the breaking of the syntactic rule of
the language code also contributes to the deviation of
the lines quoted. 20
The second category of primary deviation can be
exemplified using the very last line of Hopkins' "The
Wreck of the Deutschland":
Our hearts' charity's hearth's fire, our thoughts'
Chivalry's throng's Lord.
Deviation here is caused by the repetitive use of the
genitive construction to an unusual degree: three
successive genitives occur in each parallel half-line.
This linguistic feature is ''more often than usual'' for,
in practice, one very rarely has cause to make up a
sequence of more than two genitives in spite of the fact
that genitive construction in English is one of those
which can be indefinitely repeated

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In secondary deviation, the text deviates not from
the norms of linguistic expression in general, but
from norms of literary composition, including
norms of author or genre.

Leech (1985:48) identifies this deviation in Shelley's

"Ode to the West Wind" in which the metrical
pattern shows a deviation from the ode's implicit
iambic pentameter pattern of x / x / x / x / x .

He extends his analysis to reveal how the metrical

variation contributes to the impression of the wind's
unruly force in the poem.

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In internal deviation, the features of language within
the text depart from the norms the text itself has led us
to expect. It is identified by its contrast with the
preceding context. Internal deviation explains why
even ordinary and banal pieces of language acquire
extraordinary prominence and impact in literary
contexts.
Analyzing Jane Austen's language, Page (1972:104f.)
attributes the prominence of the three-word sentence
"Miss Taylor married" at the beginning of the novel
Emma to its internal deviation from the text's
background of longer sentences where the average
sentence length for the first five paragraphs runs up to
26.5 words. Internal deviation often signals a point of
climax. 23
 2.1. Kinds of Deviation
we shall identify specific deviations across different linguistic
levels outlined in the figure(Tripartite Model of Linguistic
Components) below:

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As the figure shows there can be deviations of
phonological (conventional poetic licenses such as
elision, aphesis, apocope etc)
and graphological (visual patterning, capitalization,
spacing, punctuation, etc.) kind within the linguistic
level of realization.
Under semantics, we have semantic deviation which
prompts the readers to prefer a figurative
interpretation to a literal one in literary expressions.
This is evident in Keats' celebrated paradox "Beauty
is truth, truth beauty."
Lexical deviation results when a new word is coined,
or a word is unusually converted, or a new word is
formed through affixation.
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As for the grammatical deviation, we shall examine the
following introductory passage from James Joyce's A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a
moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was
coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby
tuckoo. . . .

This passage provides us with a specimen of language

that lacks normal logical transitions. Its repetitive
structure and apparently un contextualized
presentation impressionistically evoke a re-experience
of Stephen's (the hero's) childhood consciousness.

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 2.2. Interpretation of Deviation
Since deviation is especially characteristic of poetic
language, it provides us with a working criterion for
the selection of those linguistic features which are of
literary significance.
Leech and Short (1981:139) recommend two different
models of style which could locate stylistic effect in a
literary text. They are:
(a) 'Stylistic variants model' which locates stylistic
effect against a background of other equivalent
variants (i.e., Stylistic variants model assumes that
language specifies a code and that a writer's style
consists in preferences exercised within the limits of
that code) , and 27
(b) 'foregrounding model' which locates stylistic
effect against a background of more normal or
expected expressions that could have occurred.

That is, foregrounding model assumes that creative

users of language often overstep the rules and
conventions of language code to produce original
meanings and effects.).

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 Parallelism .3
While discussing linguistic deviation in section '2', we
have referred to the linguistic choices a writer makes
both inside and outside the language system.
Even when he confines himself to the system, the
choices he makes can deviate from some expected
frequency of linguistic occurrence.
Occurrence of language elements more often than usual
is as quantitatively deviant as their presence more
rarely than usual.
One obvious example of the former category is the
repetition of lexical items or the grouping of words
from the same area of association in a text.
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Parallelism provides another example for this over-
regularity of a particular choice within the system
(Leech and Short,1981:142). Parallelism is
identified as "structural repetition in which
variable elements occur''. Short (1985:9)quotes the
following line from Shakespeare's Othello as the
"best example ever" of parallelism:
I kissed thee ere I killed thee
The line consists of two parallel clauses linked by
ere:
< [SPO] cj [SPO] > . The Words I and thee are
repeated. This leaves 'kissed' and 'killed' which are
parallel, as shown below:

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(i) phonetic - / kist/ , / kild/
There is phonetic parallelism through alliteration (the
repeated word-initial / k / and the similarity of word-final /
d / and / t / ) and assonance (the repeated / i / bowel).
Further both the words are monosyllabic and have the same
structure, CVCC.

(ii) orthographic - kissed , killed

The only orthographic difference between the words lies in
the presence of double 's' and double ' I ' in 'kissed' and
'killed' respectively. Even here there is parallelism due to
doubling.

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(iii) morphological - kiss-ed , kill-ed

Both the words consist of two morphemes, the second of

which is a past tense marker.

Both kissed and killed are predicators within the parallel

clauses.

Short concludes that it is this parallel linguistic pattern in

the line that makes it foregrounded and therefore
important interpretatively(Ibid.).

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 3.1. Effect of Parallelism
Parallelism tends to foreground the relations of
meaning between parallel words and phrases which
fill the variable positions(Ibid.).

The relations of meaning foregrounded in this way are

in general relationships of similarity or of contrast.

The synonymical or antonymical relations of meaning

between the expressions paralleled may also be
reinforced by phonological, morphological, and
grammatical features.

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In the expression "I kissed thee ere I killed thee"
discussed above in section '3',
parallelism promotes the observation of antonymical
relations of meaning between the paralleled items
''kissed'' and ''killed''.

It is this effect of parallelism that makes the readers

see the two halves of the quoted line as opposed to
each other and in particular 'kissed' as opposed to
''killed'' and thereby relate the former to the love
theme in Othello and the latter to its theme of hate or
jealousy(Ibid.:10).

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An example where parallelism promotes synonymical
relations of meaning is found in Pope's ''The Rape of
the Lock'':
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux

This is a special kind of parallelism in which the writer

resorts deliberately to a language pattern which
resembles the structuring of items in a list. It exhibits
morphological equivalence in that all are plural in
number, grammatical equivalence in that all are nouns,
and phonological equivalence in that word-initial / p /, /
b / and / d / alliterate.

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These features make us interpret the items in the list
as being the same in some way.

Thus though the language code does not prescribe

synonymical relationship between bible and cosmetics,
the poetic context does with the help of the unique
language pattern created through parallelism.

It is as elements of a pattern in a context that linguistic

items acquire values other than they have in the
language code.

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Final Word
That literary discourse is characterized by the
creation of unique language patterns and that its
linguistic items contract special values as elements
in these created patterns are of considerable
importance in literary studies.
To the linguist, it points to the possibility of
representing literary works not as totally different
ways of using language but as extensions of the way
language is used in ordinary kinds of discourse.

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To the literary artist himself, it signifies the
inadequacy of the resources of language code to
provide for the expression of his individual
perceptions and concepts and the demands it makes on
him to devise his own patterns.
To the critic, it points to the need for restricting oneself
to the linguistic analysis of textual data rather than
muse over the extratextual details.
As for the teacher of literature, he becomes conscious
of the pedagogic need to develop among his learners
an awareness of the way language is used in literary
discourse, as distinct from its use in everyday
discourse, for the conveying of unique messages.
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