Metaphor is of central importance to stylistics. The purpose of the present MA thesis is to analyze metaphor in the text of belles-lettres as a means of deviation and foregrounding. Metaphor theories and its background information are a few factors which have been taken into consideration while analysing and interpreting a metaphor. The analysis is carried out on the basis of the abundance of metaphor definitions and their adequate examples. The method of the research is descriptive-analytical, based on the analysis of theoretical statements and description of illustrations in belles-lettres style. The research covers a detailed description of metaphors according to the type of semantic connection between words. The work also reveals that metaphoric expressions are mostly found as the cases of dehumanizing metaphors, which ascribe animal or inanimate property to human beings. The obvious dominance of these metaphors relates to the fact that the kernel point of the novel Carry on Jeeves spins around the relationships between an Englishman Bertie Wooster and his butler Jeeves. The linguistic analysis clears out that the majority of dehumanizing metaphors are employed in the novel in order to reflect the negative or taint qualities of a person. Most cases of the metaphorical transfer of this kind include human-animal, human-bird, human-plant, human-objects metaphor pairs. Though humanizing, concretive and synethetic metaphors are less in number they still tend to be original and... [to full text]

This study is premised on the assumption that foregrounding is the dominant feature of poetry. Such an assumption informs this study to the extent that it examines the role of foregrounding in isiXhosa modem poetry. Foregrounding, as an unusual or deviant usage of language, manifests itself as: metaphorical language, foregrounded sound, syntactic foregrounding and the variation of rhythmico-metrical structure. These are called foregrounding techniques. However, this study deals only with the first three foregrounding techniques. Qangule's poetry furnishes this study with examples that are used to illustrate that foregrounding plays a significant role in isiXhosa modem poetry. The foregrounding techniques depict, illustrate, dramatize and suggest the meaning of a poem. They also have the ability to do that in a collaborative manner. Such a claim is evidenced by the comprehensive analysis and interpretation of the poem Ukubonga (To praise). / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

This study is premised on the assumption that foregrounding is the dominant feature of poetry. Such an assumption informs this study to the extent that it examines the role of foregrounding in isiXhosa modem poetry. Foregrounding, as an unusual or deviant usage of language, manifests itself as: metaphorical language, foregrounded sound, syntactic foregrounding and the variation of rhythmico-metrical structure. These are called foregrounding techniques. However, this study deals only with the first three foregrounding techniques. Qangule's poetry furnishes this study with examples that are used to illustrate that foregrounding plays a significant role in isiXhosa modem poetry. The foregrounding techniques depict, illustrate, dramatize and suggest the meaning of a poem. They also have the ability to do that in a collaborative manner. Such a claim is evidenced by the comprehensive analysis and interpretation of the poem Ukubonga (To praise). / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

The paper presents an in-depth study of focus marking in Gùrùntùm, a West Chadic language spoken in Bauchi Province of Northern Nigeria. Focus in Gùrùntùm is marked morphologically by means of a focus marker a, which typically precedes the focus constituent. Even though the morphological focus-marking system of Gùrùntùm allows for a lot of fine-grained distinctions in information structure (IS) in principle, the language is not entirely free of focus ambiguities that arise as the result of conflicting IS- and syntactic requirements that govern the placement of focus markers. We show that morphological focus marking with a applies across different types of focus, such as newinformation, contrastive, selective and corrective focus, and that a does not have a second function as a perfectivity marker, as is assumed in the literature. In contrast, we show at the end of the paper that a can also function as a foregrounding device at the level of discourse structure.

In this paper, doubling in Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands is discussed. In both sign languages different constituents (including verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and whole clauses) can be doubled. It is shown that doubling in both languages has common functions and exhibits a similar structure, despite some differences. On this basis, a unified pragmatic explanation for many doubling phenomena on both the discourse and the clause-internal levels is provided, namely that the main function of doubling both in RSL and NGT is foregrounding of the doubled information.

This present study examines the structural impact of language contact on discourse information marking in narrative. It focuses on the surface patterns and underlying linguistic principles used to describe the foregrounding events in traditional and modem short stories, written in Indonesian (the official language of Indonesia) and Sundanese (the native language of West Java province). These two languages have been in an intensive contact since 1945.The data indicate that aspect sets apart background from foreground, whereas tense distinguishes ordinary from significant within the background and foreground levels. Cross-linguistically, the ordinary background information appears in existential, stative, and progressive constructions, marked by the underlying past-tense and imperfective aspect; the significant background and significant foreground types occur in a direct speech and/or direct quote, with the underlying Historical Present. Besides signaling a switch from the past-tense to the HP, the direct speech or direct quote also marks a shift in deixis, distal to proximal. The ordinary foreground information, containing events that advance the story, appears in the underlying past-tense and perfective aspect.The surface markings of the ordinary foreground events, however, are different. In the traditional and modern Indonesian data, these events are dominantly depicted in the active-voice structure. The traditional and modern Sundanese texts, on the other hand, show two different dominant surface marking patterns: the KA (particle) and the active-voice constructions respectively. This appears as a shift in the surface marking strategy attributed to the Indonesian structural influence. The KA- to active voice surface-marking strategy shift indicates the change from the KA + Topic – Comment pattern to the Subject – Predicate structure, suggesting the adoption of the SVX word-order pattern. This affects not only the pragmatic relations of the constituents in an utterance, but also the marking of given-new information distinction.The study demonstrates that the KA to active-voice marking shift in the modern Sundanese data is mitigated by the long-term language contact with Indonesian. Follow-up investigations with varied narrative themes and oral speech data are warranted. Since the shift also appears to indicate the authors' unbalanced bilingual skills, it raises an issue pertinent to the current teaching of Sundanese in the West-Javanese provincial curriculum. / Department of English

No description available.

Jicarilla Apache is a Southern Athabaskan language with a complex verbal structure, including a prefix template with positions for more than ten affixes. Little has been done to document or describe the language grammatically or typologically, but one of the morphemes that has been described in the literature is the suffix -go. The morpheme can be found in elicited speech as well as in narrations. This morpheme is one of the few verbal affixes that can appear after the verb stem and plays a role in many subordinate clause constructions. It has been described as a temporal marker, a feature of certain auxiliary verb constructions, a marker of habitual aspect, and a required part of causative constructions, among others. Such a wide variety of uses can make it difficult for language learners to know when this morpheme should be included. But there is one function that would account for all the previous descriptions and provide a simpler paradigm for funderstanding what triggers the presence of -go: namely, that of reference tracking. No referent tracking function of -go has been described, yet many of the functions of -go provided in the literature can also be explained as the result of a system of reference tracking. This thesis argues that Jicarilla features a reference tracking system that combines foregrounding functions with the features of switch reference, according to the definition of foregrounding found in Simpson (2004) and the definitions of switch reference found in van Gijn (2016a) and Stirling (1993). This is demonstrated by reviewing all the examples of -go in the available literature, including Goddard (1911), Jung (2002), and Phone, Olson, Martinez, & Axelrod (2007).

To be perceived as trustworthy in the eyes of the stakeholders is one of the main assets of any successful firm, for a positive image will reflect positively on business. This study focuses on the analysis of trust-building strategies in Annual Reports (ARs) and Corporate Responsibility Reports (CRRs) of two Swiss banks, UBS and Credit Suisse. The analysis aims to identify the linguistic means used to project a trustworthy image, as well as to point out any changes in their use which might have occurred after the financial crisis of 2008. For this purpose, a corpus of ARs and CRRs from the years 2007, 2012 and 2017 has been compiled. The corpus was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively to identify the frequency and distribution of lexical expressions indexing competence, benevolence, and integrity. The results, though tentative, provide insights into the use of trust-building linguistic means and their diachronic development.

The aim of this paper was to analyse foregrounding elements in Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging.” The analysis shows that deviances from everyday non-literary language, i.e. foregrounding, are both likely to evoke defamiliarisation in readers and also provide readers with the likelihood of having an aesthetic experience. This has been done by adhering to the literary theory of Cognitive stylistics and to its related literary concepts, namely the theory of foregrounding. Furthermore, this paper also aimed to provide examples of how “Digging” can be taught in a pedagogical setting. In short, this paper argues for a teaching of poetry that focuses on the sensual aesthetic qualities in a poem. Therefore, this paper supports the claim that students need to attentively read, watch and perform poetry in order to experience its sounds and textures fully. Such an approach corresponds well to an aesthetic education which aims at developing, in students, a heightened awareness of and appreciation for all that touches our lives. Lastly, the pedagogical implementations showed that a foregrounding analysis of “Digging” can be fruitful to incorporate in the EFL classroom. Apart from evoking defamiliarisation and aesthetic reactions, a stylistic analysis can also serve to raise students' linguistic and literary awareness. As a result, students can discover why poets make particular language choices as well as develop their ability to interpret literary works.