2021•Unpublished venueRequires access
FOREGROUNDING AND LITERARINESS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ADRIAN HENRI’S ‘TONIGHT AT NOON’ AND MARTIN LUTHER KING’S ‘I HAVE A DREAM’
Abdu Dan’Azumi, Yahaya Ibrahim Aliyu
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Abstract
The study is a comparative analysis of foregrounding and literariness in the poem ‘Tonight at Noon’ and the speech ‘I Have a Dream’. It aims at finding the relevance of foregrounding in the stylistic analysis of literary and non-literary texts. The dominant stylistic evidence of foregrounded features investigated in the selected texts is derived from deviation and parallelism. The study finds that deviation is found at the semantic level of the language of the poem whereas no definite semantic deviation is found in Martin Luther’s speech. However, both the poem and the speech are characterised by deviance from language codes at various levels including repetitions of parallel structures. The conclusion is that foregrounding is a stylistic device that is invaluable in the interpretation of all manner of texts whether literary or non-literary.