Standard Language and Poetic Language

    Jan Mukarovsky a member of Prague school of structural linguistic has formulated his basic literary idea of foregrounding by introducing two types of language: standard language and poetic Language.

    The standard language to Mukarovsky is the language of everyday communication so it is a rule bound, practical and automatized. The poetic language, on the other hand is a deviated use of the standards language where the differences are fore- grounded. Therefore, it is boundless, literary and deautomatized. However the foregrounding of the poetic language is possible as there is the standard language at the background. In this sense both the language are interrelated and essential in literary creation. In other words, the poetic language plays the role of foregrounding and the standard language plays the site of back grounding.

     The foregrounding is the systematic process of the intentional distortion of the linguistic components on the basic of the standard language for the purpose of defamiliarization so that a literary work imparts a renewed perception.

    The standard language with clearly designed norms offers a greater opportunity for foregrounding in poetry. The language once foregrounded does not remain new for all the time. In course of time, it becomes standard and automatized, which is to be again fore grounded. In this way Mukarovsky sees the poem as a unity in variety- a dynamic unity of harmony and disharmony, and foregrounding and backgrounding.

     The process of foregrounding does not take place randomly in poetic creation. The foregrounding consists of two types of gradation of components: superordination and subordination. The superordination is also called domination and gives direction of foregrounding to other components. The dominant is the focusing component of foregrounding. Sometimes allegory becomes dominant, sometimes symbols and sometimes form is dominant. Dominant motions, rules, determine and transform the remaining automatized component to achieve its maximum foregrounding.

Victor Shklovsky         Victor Shklovosky, a founder of the OPAYAZ group in Russia, occupies a significant position in Russian Formalism by introducing his literary concept of art as technique, thereby making the notion of defamiliarization as a central tenet of the Russian Formalism.His emphasis lies on the exploration of new literary techniques and devices in a work of art for its renewed perception and literariness.He refutes the theory of the work of art as an art that exploits no more new devices and techniques; instead he put forward that if art uses the same device repeatedly it only gives a stale taste.He rejects Potebnya, who emphasizes on the use of imagery in every literary art and symbols and images are in the fundamental defining elements of poetry. He argues that literariness lies in the deviant use of language, but not the symbols and imagery. He takes habitual perception as automatic as it automatizes sense perception. Read More...

Roman Jakobson     Roman Jackson, first one of the leading members of Russian formalism and then a founder of the Prague School of Linguistics, stands as a link between formalism and structuralism. He is such a literary theorist whose approach is essentially that of a linguist.His famous piece of essay “Thee Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances” is a seminal text in structural analysis as developed by Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure has a view that every speech is divided from the langue and that the process of choice of words has a two-fold character: Syntagma (combination) and Paradigma (selection). Syntagma comes in to play whenever we form a sentence whereas Paradigma applies at every stage that is any noun used in a sentence is actually, after we have selected it from the vast inventory of language. Read More...

Boris Eichenbaum     Eichenbaum is one of the great members of Russian Formalism who tried to systematize formalist principle to set up a theory. Eichenbaum tries to employ scientific procedures and establish Formalism, a scientific theory. For the science of literature, both independent and factual methods are needed. He however agrees with the opponents that, in Formalism, there is no strict methodology. He says that Russian Formalism is not dogmatic but it is a historical summation. The theory is valued only as a working hypothesis. He says that he is not concerned with definitions nor does he intend to argue formalist position. Read More...

St. Augustine     St. Augustine is accepted as the first linguist theorist. Through he was not born Christian; he adopted Christianity, later on introduced himself as the most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul. He is a neo- Platonist because he believes in two worlds; world of god and world of human being.The essay “On Christian Doctrine” brings Augustine to the attention of modern semioticians and literary theorists. For him, signs are things used to signify something and words are things, the whole use of which is signification. For him all signs are things, not all things are signs.A sign is important because it points to something else and that something else is ultimately for Augustine the trinity of father, son and Holy Ghost. The Value of sign therefore is not pleasurable in itself but rather in its use in the movement of signification towards God.However signs cannot embody God because God is too great to be described in words. So in the middle age, Bible was claimed to be holding the primary of religious teaching so reading and understanding Bible is reaching near to the truth. His chief purpose here, is to show how the formal method, by gradually evolving and broadening its field of research, spread beyond the usual methodological limits and became a special science of literature, a specific ordering of facts. Read More...