Deviation for Foregrounding Purposes - A Universal Phenomenon
Task A - our answer
Deviation within the popgroup name "INXS"
This is what we said when you looked at this example in Topic 1 Session
B:
It consists of four capital letters which do not spell
an English word, but which, if read out in the right way, create the
prepositional phrase 'in excess'. This is achieved by 'seeing' the first
two letters as spelling the preposition 'in' and pronouncing the names
of the letters 'X' and 'S' so that they combine to resemble the pronunciation
of the noun 'excess'. The first consequence of this name, then, is that
we have to work at it when we first see it, rather like a piece of elementary
code of the sort seen in children's comics.
What we wrote then was a less technical way of saying that the name is
graphologically deviant in various ways.
Notice, also, that foregrounding may occur at more than one linguistic
level at the same time. In addition to the graphological deviation just
mentioned, this pop group name is grammatically deviant because, unlike
most such names, which are usually noun phrases, it is a prepositional
phrase.
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