Foregrounding is the practice of making something stand out from the surrounding words or images. It is “the ‘throwing into relief’ of the linguistic sign against the background of the norms of ordinary language.” The term was first associated with Paul Garvin in the 1960s, who used it as a translation of the Czech aktualisace (literally "to actualise"), borrowing the terms from the Prague school of the 1930s.

There are two main types of foregrounding: parallelism (grammar)

Parallelism (grammar)

In grammar, parallelism is a balance of two or more similar words, phrases, or clauses. The application of parallelism in sentence construction can sometimes improve writing style clearness and readability. Parallelism may also be known as parallel structure or parallel construction...

 and deviation. Parallelism can be described as unexpected regularity, while deviation can be seen as unexpected irregularity. As the definition of foregrounding indicates, these are relative concepts. Something can only be unexpectedly regular or irregular within a particular context. This context can be relatively narrow, such as the immediate textual surroundings (referred to as a 'secondary norm') or wider such as an entire genre (referred to as a 'primary norm').

For example, the last line of a poem with a consistent metre may be foregrounded by changing the number of syllables it contains. This would be an example of a deviation from a secondary norm. In the following poem by E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...

, there are two types of deviation:

light’s lives lurch

a once world quickly from rises

army the gradual of unbeing fro

on stiffening greenly air and to ghosts go

drift slippery hands tease slim float twitter faces

Only stand with me, love! against these its

until you are, and until i am dreams...

Firstly, most of the poem deviates from 'normal' language (primary deviation). In addition, there is secondary deviation in that the penultimate line is unexpectedly different from the rest of the poem. Nursery rhyme

Nursery rhyme

The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...

s, adverts and slogan

Slogan

A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a political, commercial, religious and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. The word slogan is derived from slogorn which was an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm . Slogans vary from the written and the...

s often exhibit parallelism in the form of repetition and rhyme

Rhyme

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...

, but parallelism can also occur over longer texts. For example, jokes are often built on a mixture of parallelism and deviation. They often consist of three parts or characters. The first two are very similar (parallelism) and the third one starts out as similar, but out expectations are thwarted when it turns out different in end (deviation).

Foregrounding can occur on all levels of language (phonology

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

, graphology

Graphology

Graphology is the pseudoscientific study and analysis of handwriting, especially in relation to human psychology. In the medical field, it can be used to refer to the study of handwriting as an aid in diagnosis and tracking of diseases of the brain and nervous system...

, morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

, lexis

Lexis

Lexis may refer to:*Lexis , the total bank of words and phrases of a particular language, the artifact of which is known as a lexicon*Lexis *Lexis.com, part of the LexisNexis online information database-People with the name:...

, syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

, semantics

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

 and pragmatics

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the...

). It is generally used to highlight important parts of a text, to aid memorability and/or to invite interpretation.