ABSTRACT

All stylistic approaches share is the making of untested assumptions about the psychology of poet or audience. Many of these assumptions are reasonable and intuitively correct to the student or practicioner of verbal art. A series of experiments revealed a number of issues bearing on the psychological dimension of the theory. Foregrounding (FG) was found to be strongly related to the stylistic devices of FG, as described by a close textual analysis of the poems used as test materials. Foregrounding devices are linguistic means which author and reader have at their disposal for realizing particular aims. One fact and an important one is the high frequency with which FG devices do occur in most of the typical sub-genres of children's literature, such as: counting out rhymes, nursery rhymes, songs, fairy-tales. The devices of foregrounding, like most stylistic phenomena, bear on actual linguistic realization.