Casa · C1 Advanced · Lesson 13 of 20 · Step 2
Foregrounding and Stylistic Devices
Words · tap a card to see it used
Grammar
Foregrounding is achieved through deviation (breaking linguistic norms) or parallelism (creating unexpected patterns). Analysing stylistic devices requires specific critical language: 'The author employs metaphor to…', 'This instance of irony serves to highlight…', 'The alliterative pattern reinforces the sense of…', 'Through juxtaposition, the writer draws attention to…'. Understanding these devices and the language used to discuss them is essential at C1 level for literary and textual analysis.
Exercises · type, then check
1. Identify the stylistic device used in each example.
2. Choose the most appropriate analytical language to describe each literary feature.
Reading
The Russian formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky argued that the purpose of literature is to make the familiar strange — a concept he termed 'defamiliarisation'. Through foregrounding — the deliberate deviation from ordinary language — literary texts compel readers to see the world afresh. A poet who writes 'the sun bled across the horizon' employs metaphor to transform a commonplace sunset into something visceral and unsettling. An essayist who places a description of a child's birthday party beside an account of a famine uses juxtaposition to force a moral reckoning. Alliteration, often dismissed as mere decoration, can create patterns of sound that reinforce meaning: the sibilance of 'silence settled softly on the snow' enacts the very stillness it describes. Irony, perhaps the most complex of all stylistic devices, invites the reader to perceive a gap between surface meaning and underlying truth — a gap that can be comic, tragic, or both. What unites these devices is their capacity to disrupt automatic perception. In everyday communication, language is transparent — we look through it to the meaning. In literature, foregrounding makes language opaque, inviting us to look at it. This shift of attention is, for many critics, the defining characteristic of the literary experience.
1. What is 'defamiliarisation', and who coined the term?
2. How does the passage distinguish between the role of language in everyday communication and in literature?
Speaking · say it out loud, with a partner or alone
Writing
Write a short critical analysis (6–8 sentences) of a literary text you have read, identifying and discussing at least three stylistic devices. Use appropriate analytical language throughout.
Check your exercises first, then mark the lesson done.