According to formalist critics, foregrounding is a stylistic device that draws attention to itself by way of its defamiliarization from everyday speech. According to an abstract by Maiall & Kuiken (1994):
Stylistic variations, known as foregrounding, hypothetically prompt defamiliarization, evoke feelings, and prolong reading time. These possibilities were tested in four studies in which segment by segment reading times and ratings were collected from readers of a short story. In each study, foregrounded segments of the story were associated with increased reading times, greater strikingness ratings, and greater affect ratings. Response to foregrounding appeared to be independent of literary competence or experience. Reasons for considering readers' response to foregrounding as a distinctive aspect of interaction with literary texts are discussed.
Also, according to Walker Gibson, there are three styles of discourse: plain/tough, sweet, and stuffy. Plain/tough is the language of prose fiction; sweet is the language of advertising; stuffy is the language of Academia (textbooks). If any of the other two styles creep into the other, it is foregrounding, as the author, by way of style, is calling attention to the shift in discourse. His overall premise, of course, is that in a piece of writing, the audience identifies the author by style first and foremost; style breeds trust.
My favorite foregrounders are Faulker, who infuses his experimental fiction with poetic devices (Sound & Fury; As I Lay Dying), and Nabokov, whose creative uses of punctuation (parentheses) in Lolita, both draw attention to themselves, more so that their narrators.
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