ABSTRACT
This chapter looks in some detail at the texts that were used as test material in the experiments. There can be little doubt as to the importance of the actual analyses of the poems carried out. Any testing of the theory of foregrounding depends for its validity on the objectivity with which the predictions based on the theory are arrived at. Since the aim was to make generalizations about readers' responses to any given text, it was imperative to avoid any bias in the composition of the text-corpus and to make it as representative as possible. A related restriction bears on the fact that the study was first and foremost aimed at the exploration of the effects of FG as caused by the language of texts. he geometric figures used to indicate types of FG devices were drawn at the beginning of the lines or frames indicating the different levels of description.
