Foregrounding in the creation of socially significant humor in the early stories by Mark Twain

The central concept of the discursive text analysis is the technique of foregrounding of the regulatory structure that determines the interpretative activity of the reader. The approaches to the study of the phenomenon indicate the scientific interest to text Linguistics as a recent developing branch. Foregrounding includes a cluster of stylistic means in the light of the decoding style. The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the functioning of classical types of foregrounding in creating a socially significant humor as a code to the author’s message in one of the early stories by M. Twain, written earlier than 1870. The paper considers the main types of foregrounding making the research field. They are: convergence, repetition, and deceived expectation. Findings of research show that the main technique of the "laugh" world of an outstanding American writer is lexical repetition. The methods of foregrounding in the description of the main character, a "naive innocent", by the character-narrator "Mark Twain", allow creating an atmosphere of comic convention, which is a code to defining the socio-ideological position of the writer in the "diversity" of his era. An increasing interest to the linguistic analysis of literary works of the past contributes to the perception of their ideological content in the tune with the current morality commitments of a society. The relevance of the work defines that a holistic consideration of the methods of foregrounding in literary works will provide new data for the further development of an integrative model of perception of an artistic discourse.

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