Discourse new entities and composition of lyric poem: Foreground as the most informative part of discourse
Discourse new entities and composition of lyric poem: Foreground as the most informative part of discourse

Author(s): Gennadij Zeldowicz
Subject(s): Semiotics / Semiology, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Other Language Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: lyric discourse; composition; foreground; background; discourse old entities; discourse new entities
Summary/Abstract: According to (Сильман 1977), the main compositional divide in lyrical discourse is that between presentation of the author’s emotional/mental experience, which normally constitutes the backgrounded part of the text, and some generalization implying discovery of a significant truth and/or change in the author’s attitude towards the world, which in most cases becomes the foreground. While in general this distinction may be marked by a vast range of linguistic devices, it is hypothesized in the article that one of the major characteristic features of the foreground of lyrical poem is its strive for greater informativeness, and it is manifested, inter alia, by considerably higher incidence of discourse new entities in foregrounded fragments. This claim is supported by counts based on analysis of 100 outstanding poems written mostly in Russian.

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