Foreground and Background in a Narrative: Trends in Foreign Linguistic and Translation Studies

Abstract

The review accumulates the information on the Theory of Grounding and Saliency Hierarchy (based on publications that have not been translated into Russian) and describes the main modern trends in the study of grounding. The Theory of Grounding, designed in the last quarter of the 20th century, has since then been developing within linguistic, narratological, cognitive and translation studies, being applied to texts of various genres in many languages. Early works in this sphere elaborated the criteria characterizing the relative grounding of the clauses in the narrative (based on temporal sequentiality and transitivity), while later research, focusing on the wider range of texts including free indirect discourse and non-sequential prose, highlighted the subjectivity of grounding, including criteria of human importance and unpredictability into the analysis of the salient clauses. As a result the Theory of Grounding has contributed to various coexisting trends in the scientific research concerning subordination of clauses and anaphoric relations in texts on the one hand, and deixis, evaluation and perspective on the other. Touching upon these trends in the review, we pay special attention to the analysis of grounding within translation studies: the researchers focus on transitivity in translation, revealing and explaining the cases of non-intentional and purposeful changes in transitivity made by translators. The analysis of the deictic center shifts in original texts and their translations also contributes to our knowledge of grounding devices. Out of all publications, our special attention is drawn to the studies of grounding that employ Russian-language narrative materials.