Stylistic Study of Foregrounding in Royal Speeches of Charles III from Princehood to Monarchy.

This paper investigates stylistic features in royal speeches delivered by Charles III, both as Prince of Wales and King of the UK. The study aims to identify the most frequently used foregrounding device and to determine whether a consistent pattern appears throughout the speeches. Foregrounding occurs through either an unexpected regularity, known as parallelism, or an unexpected irregularity, known as deviation. The analysis uses Leech's (1969) deviation levels and Halliday's (1971) motivated prominence types to develop a framework model for detailed study. Both quantitative data and qualitative implications derived from sample examples are employed in the analysis. The data include fifty-eight speeches delivered by Charles III, as Prince of Wales and King of the UK. Eighty sample examples are extracted from the speeches for analysis. A unique colour coding is used to highlight stylistic devices. A comparison is drawn between the stylistic devices in the speeches of both titles.The findings show the highest degree of deviation at the lexical and syntactic levels, evidenced by the frequent use of repetition, parentheticals and fronting as linguistic devices. Charles III’s style does not remain unchanged throughout his reign as Prince of Wales and King of the UK, indicating that he adapts his approach over time.