Style and Poetics

Question 1

Where can foregrounding be effective?

Answer 1

In poetry: rhyming, alliteration and metaphor /
In prose: tense and hyperbole /
In drama: conversations, sets, lighting, sounds.

Question 2

What were the Moscow Linguistic Circle and what did they do?

Answer 2

• A group of linguists (which included Roman Jakobson) who defined POETIC LANGAGE.
• focused on the message that texts aimed to create.
• studied many forms of literature.

Question 3

Who established the Prague Linguistic Circle and in what year?

Answer 3

Roman Jakobson and Jan Mukarovsky in 1926.

Question 4

What did the Prague Linguistic Circle define?

Answer 4

• STRUCTURALISM - focused on the patterns found within language.
• Jakobson and Mukarovsky declared that structuralism was part of a mental structure of human communication (we are born with the ability to perform it).

Question 5

What is DEVIATION and who focused on it?

Answer 5

Mukarovsky studied it and defined it as any formal or functional distinctions from the language within a text.

Question 6

What did Jakobson focus on within foregrounding?

Answer 6

Parallelism. The idea of structural similarities within a text which help with their poetic message.

Question 7

Define INTERNAL DEVIATION and EXTERNAL DEVIATION

Answer 7

Internal deviation is a change from the established pattern within a text. /
External deviation is a change from something known outside of the text.

Question 8

Give example of syntactic, metrical and lexical parallelism.

Answer 8

Syntactic: choruses in song lyrics usually are syntactically and discoursally parallel. /
Metrical: poems usually have a metrical factor in place. E.g limericks AABBA scheme /
Lexical: using the same words.

Question 9

Define FOREGROUNDING

Answer 9

Foregrounding is the act of highlighting a reader’s focus on something particular.

Question 10

What are the three ways of creating a narrative point of view?

Answer 10

Discourse structure, narrator (who is talking? First person is unreliable and biased but third person is subjective too and not very personal) and perspective (changes in time, space or person).

Question 11

What indicates point of view?

Answer 11

A character’s personal ideology / pre-supposed information / diectic language (verbal pointing) / value laden expressions (emotive etc)