ESSENTIAL CONCEPTS OF DECODING STYLISTIC ANALYSIS AND TYPES OF FOREGROUNDING

Decoding stylistics investigates the same levels as linguastylistics — phonetic, graphical, lexical, and grammatical. The basic difference is that it studies expressive means provided by each level not as isolated devices that demonstrate some stylistic function but as a part of the general pattern discernible on the background of relatively lengthy segments of the text, from a paragraph to the level of the whole work.

Ideas, events, characters, emotions and an author's attitudes are all encoded in the text through language. The reader is expected to perceive and decipher these things by reading and interpreting the text. Decoding stylistics is actually the reader's stylistics that is engaged in recreating the author's vision of the world with the help of concrete text elements and their interaction throughout the text.

One of the fundamental concepts of decoding stylistics is foregroun­ding. The notion itself was suggested by the scholars of the Prague linguistic circle. (Trubetskoy, Jacobson, Matezius).

The Prague school introduced into linguistics a functional approach to language. Their central thesis postulated that language is not a rigorous petrified structure but a dynamic functional system. In other words language is a system of means of expression that serve a definite purpose in communication. Their views exerted profound influence on stylistic research in areas of functional styles study, the norm and its variations in the national language, as well as the study of poetic language, i. e. the language of literature. It was for this latter sphere that the notion of foregrounding was formulated.

Foregrounding means a specific role that some language items play in a certain context when the reader's attention cannot but be drawn to them. In a literary text such items become stylistically marked features that build up its stylistic function.

Foregrounding may be based on various types of deviation or redundancy or unexpected combination of language units, etc.

Arnold points out that sometimes the effect of foregrounding can be achieved in a peculiar way by the very absence of any expressive or distinctive features precisely because they are expected in certain types of texts, e. g. the absence of rhythmical arrangement in verse.

However decoding stylistics laid down a few principal methods that ensure the effect of foregrounding in a literary text. Among them we can name convergence of expressive means, irradiation, defeated expectancy, coupling, semantic fields, semi-marked structures.

CONVERGENCE

Convergence as the term denotes a combination or accumula­tion of stylistic devices promoting the same idea, emotion or motive. Stylistic function is not the property and purpose of expressive means of the language as such. Any type of expressive means will make sense stylistically when treated as a part of a bigger unit, the context, or the whole text. It means that there is no immediate dependence between a certain stylistic device and a definite stylistic function.

A stylistic device is not attached to this or that stylistic effect. Therefore a hyperbole, for instance, may provide any number of effects: tragic, comical, pathetic or grotesque. Inversion may give the narration a highly elevated tone or an ironic ring of parody.

This «chameleon» quality of a stylistic device enables the author to apply different devices for the same purpose. The use of more than one type of expressive means in close succession is a powerful technique to support the idea that carries paramount importance in the author's view. Such redundancy ensures the delivery of the message to the reader.

Не нашли, что искали? Воспользуйтесь поиском: