Essential concepts of decoding stylistic analysis and types of foregrounding

Decoding stylistics investigates the same levels as Iinguastylistics— phonetic, graphical, lexical, and grammatical. The basic difference is that it studies expressive means provided by each level not as isolated

5.2. Essential concepts of decoding stylistic analysis

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. The underlying idea implies that stylistic analysis can only be valid when it takes into account the overall concept and aesthetic system of the author reflected in his writing.

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.

A systematic and elaborate presentation of decoding stylistics as a branch of general stylistics can be found in the book of Prof. Arnold Стилистика современного английского языка. (Стилистика де­кодирования) so here we shall limit ourselves to the description of its most general principles and concepts.

One of the fundamental concepts of decoding stylistics is foregroun­ding. The notion itself was suggested by the scholars of the Prague linguistic circle that was founded in 1926 and existed until early 50s. Among its members were some of the most outstanding linguists of the 20^<Л century, such as N. S. Trubetskoy, S. O. Kart-sevsky, R. Jacobson, V. Matezius, B. Tmka, J. Vachek, V. Skalichka and others (20). The Prague circle represented a trend of structural linguistics and devel­oped a number of ideas and notions that made a valuable contribution into modern linguistic theory, for example, phonology and the theory of oppositions, the theory of functional sentence perspective, the no­tions of norm and codification, functional styles and dialectology, etc.

Chapter 5. Decoding Stylistics and Its Fundamental Notions

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.

Prof. Arnold has highlighted various treatments of the term by different authors in her book on decoding stylistics but the essence of the concept consists in the following. 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.

Descriptive, statistical, distributional and other kinds of linguistic analysis show that there are certain modes of language use and arrangement to achieve the effect of foregrounding. It may be j 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.

5.2. Essential concepts of decoding stylistic analysis

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