Abstract

The article presents a cognitive stylistic analysis of occasionalisms (nonce words) as tools of lexical deviation in the text of the poem “First Day at School” by the modern English poet R. McGough. According to the methodology developed for analyzing foregrounding devices, examples of occasionalisms in a text reflect the processes occurring both at its surface and deep (cognitive) levels. In this regard, occasionalisms are viewed through the prism of the interconnectedness of their external attractive and implicit conceptual features, which help reflect the cognitive stylistic features of the foregrounding process. Occasionalisms confirm that the individual authorial specificity of lexical deviation is manifested on the basis of the interaction and complementarity of a non-standard external linguistic form and the activation of cognitive processes and mechanisms. The research results indicate that lexical deviations (occasionalisms) as the effective foregrounding devices are determined by the cognitive principles underlying their formation and projection of mental spaces, which provide the breadth and depth of cognitive structures’ representation and their key role in creating attractive (stylistic) potential of the foregrounding process as a whole.

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