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Creating patterns

Read this article to understand how writers use linguistic foregrounding to make parts of the text stand out to the reader.
Bubbles move across a seafront with a burnt-out pier in the background.
Now, let’s use the idea of patterns to help us analyse the poem.

Writer create patterns in texts through a technique called linguistic foregrounding or highlighting.

Linguistic foregrounding is when some features of the language stand out in some way. These are usually important parts of the text which the author signals as crucial to our understanding.

This linguistic foregrounding can take several forms: the sounds, spellings, vocabulary, word order, meaning, and appearance.

Two forms of foregrounding are:

1.Parallelism

The creation of linguistic patterns through repetition

2.Deviation

The breaking of established patterns, norms and expectations

In the next step, we will use this approach to help our analysis of the poem.

This article is from the free online

Teaching English Grammar in Context

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FutureLearn - Learning For Life

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