“Foregrounding, as I understand it, is prominence that is motivated”

— Michael Halliday

Source: 1970s and later, Explorations in the functions of language, 1973, p. 112 cited in: Laura Hidalgo-Downing (2000) Negation, Text Worlds, and Discourse. p. 4.

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Michael Halliday 23

Australian linguist 1925–2018

M. John Harrison book Light

Source: Light (2002), Chapter 2 “Gold Diggers of 2400 AD” (p. 16)

“You have to give everyone ugly motives for everything they do, because ugly motives are all you understand.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

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“Any attempt to understand the motivation of these occurrences is blocked by our own anthropomorphism. Where there are no men, there cannot be motives accessible to men.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 9: "The Liquid Oxygen", p. 134

“Every author has several motivations for writing, and authors of technical books always have, as one motivation, the personal need to understand; that is, they write because they want to learn, or to understand a phenomenon, or to think through a set of ideas.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Source: A Mathematical Theory of Systems Engineering (1967), p. v;

“I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“I won't be understood if I don't have a goal. Has no motive. Not to expose the truth. Not also to be judged. But from the beginning I knew and realized, I would not be easy to understand.”

Titon Rahmawan

Goal or motive

“At least try to see my motives. Granted that I was foolish—criminally foolish—can’t you understand? Can’t you try not to hate me?”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

She said softly, “I have tried not to love you and, as you see, I have failed.”
Source: Empire novels (1950–1952), The Stars, Like Dust (1951), Chapter 19 “Defeat!” (p. 163)

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Page 71 (1928 edition?)
Propaganda (1928)

“One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Place is important to my writing; I believe that if a reader gets a clear picture of the place where a character is from, then they can understand what motivates the character, what limits him or her…”

Jesmyn Ward (1977) American writer

Source: On using the setting to frame her novels in “Jesmyn Ward: ‘So much of life is pain and sorrow and wilful ignorance’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/12/jesmyn-ward-sing-unburied-sing-interview-meet-author in The Guardian (2017 Nov 12)

“Foregrounding, as I understand it, is prominence that is motivated”

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Michael Halliday 23

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