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Bilgewater: Foregrounded features
Task A - our answer
In sentence 4, the words 'bleak' (/bli:k/)
and 'brutal' (/bru:tl/) alliterate on the
initial consonants. The alliteration is very obvious because it involves
exact phonemic repetition on word-initial consonants, which are the most
highly perceptible phonemes in the phonemic structure of words. The two
words are words which are also very close together in the text, aiding
the perception of the alliterative pattern. Arguably, once you have noticed
this alliteration, you may feel that the effect 'spreads' in a weaker
way onto the /k/ at the end of /bli:k/
and the /t/ in the middle of /bru:tl/,
because, like /b/, these are both stop consonants.
But the word-initial alliteration is clearly the most salient. Its effect
is to reinforce phonemically, and so highlight, the semantic link between
the two words, both of which have clearly negative connotations. Effectively
this means we are using the 'parallel meaning' aspect of the 'parallelism
rule' which we explored in Topic 3. Note also that 'bleak' and 'brutal'
are also grammatically parallel - they are both pre-modifying adjectives.
The effect in sentence 68 is similar, but this time the phonemic parallelism
is fuller (and so more obvious) because it involves internal rhyme between
'old' and 'cold'. Neither 'old' nor 'cold' necessarily have to have negative
connotations, but once the two words are linked together phonemically,
the 'parallelism rule' pushes us towards the connotations for each word
which link them semantically. The repetition of 'cold' (which further
foregrounds the word) pushes in the same direction. And so does the fact
that 'old' and 'cold' are parallel grammatically to 'damp' (they are all
adjectives in a list which together act as the complement of the clause
they are in), another adjective which often has negative connotations.
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