Article

Name: Poetry, Prose and Ordinary Language

Authors: Valery Z. Demyankov

Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

Abstract:

‘Poetic language’ in modern linguistics denotes, in Saussurean terms, not only a ‘langue’ used by poets but also a poetic ‘langage’ (poétage for short). The latter means symbolically relevant activities of poets in writing and presenting their poetic works and themselves to the society. Texts interpreted as poems are presupposed to have a special status, i. a. the right to deviate from certain standards of symbolism and choice of reality assigned. Typical expectations include: (a) a special, ‘artistic’ manner of presenting the author to the auditory, (b) specific content held to deserve this poetic status in the particular socio-cultural context, and (c) formal characteristics of the poetic text consisting not only of the units of a given language (‘langue’) proper but also of units invented or borrowed ad hoc. Interrelations of poétage as activity and the ‘langue’ as a system of signs look sometimes paradoxical especially in the framework of modern poetry. But what sounds paradoxically today turns out to be future norms.

Keywords: language as langue, language as langage, poetic language, poetic langage (poétage), ordinary language, cognitive poetics

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