Bilgewater: Foregrounded features
Task B - Our answer
In each case we have an opposition made clear by the use of contrastive
'but', but also reinforced by grammatical parallelism. In each case the
contrast is between positive and negative, in terms of Bilgewater's perceptions
of the situation she is in (interview, Cambridge) or the people she meets.
The first three parallelisms we have here are easy to perceive. They
involve closely adjacent stretches of text and the parallel structures
involved are also clear.
In the first example, we have two adjective modifiers (one simple and
one complex) to the head noun 'hair' within a noun phrase: 'ageing' and
'rather pretty'. The coordinator 'but' which conjoins them, forces the
'opposite meaning' relation. The order is negative, then positive, suggesting
that the candidate's perception of the Principal is probably positive
overall.
In the second example, the 'but' joins two noun phrases which have a
parallel 'adjective + noun' structure inside them. As a consequence, 'wooden'
which does not usually have negative connotations, does here. This time
Bilgewater ends up with the negative perception, suggesting uncomfortableness
(and a heightened physical awareness) because of the stressful interview
situation she is in.
In the third example, the 'but' conjoins two adverbials together as if
they were just one,within the structure of a clause (an adverb and a negated
prepositional phrase):
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S
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P
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O
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A
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I ¦ survey ¦ them ¦ coolly but not
without respect
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Adv
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cj
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PP
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Here the attitudinal order is negative followed by positive.
In the last two examples we do not really have parallelism in the strict
sense of the term. The sentence-initial 'buts' effectively conjoin and
contrast two sentences in each case, which do not have parallel structuring
within them. But the earlier 'but + parallelism' pattern 'spreads' the
parallelistic oppositional effect and sensitises us to look for oppositions
of the kind we have already seen. In both of these cross-sentence cases,
Bilgewater's attitude is positive, followed by negative.
So overall, we can see that the oppositional pattern suggests someone
struggling to make up her mind in attitudinal terms, and with a rough
balance between here ending up with positive or negative 'slants' in this
balancing of positive and negative.
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