foregrounding
n. the process or technique of highlighting certain aspects of a complex stimulus to make them the focus of attention. Foregrounding occurs, for example, when a speaker or writer gives prominence to some elements in a communication rather than others, usually by a combination of word order, sentence construction, and more explicit pointers. Discourse analysis is much concerned with the ways in which speakers and writers tend nonconsciously to foreground certain categories of information (see given–new distinction).