Linguistic Coding Of"Defamiliarization"in Modern Chinese Poetry

Poetry is a kind of special artistic language beyond conventions,which is characterized as being strange or innovative. The distortion or violation of the convention is called as "defamiliarization",and hence poetry is known as a defamiliarized language."Defamiliarization", which is used to be categorized as literariness, can be studied and explained linguistically. From the linguistic point of view, it results from the mutual effect of various operations at different language levels.Based on the relevant modern linguistic theories, compared with modern Chinese language system, the present research sets out to investigate, describe, compare, analyze and interpret the linguistic coding of "defamiliarization" in modern Chinese poetry, aiming to reveal the rules behind the special language phenomenon and its theoretical applications.It is observed from the involved corpus of modern Chinese poetry that there are14ways of coding "defamiliarization" at lexical, syntactic and semantic levels, including lexical addition, lexical deletion, lexical substitution, lexical permutation, reduplication, compounding and mixing; syntactic addition, syntactic deletion, syntactic substitution, syntactic permutation, repetition and enjambement; semantic substitution. Through the above ways,"defarniliarization" is realized correspondingly as the following language phenomena:Lexical "defamiliarization" is divided into two categories:one is the introduction of different sources of vocabulary, leading to the mixing of modern Chinese words, foreign words, ancient words and dialect words and the revitalization of archaic words; another is the creation of nonce words, including that of affixed, compounded and reduplicated types, parody, reduction of the morphemes or syllables; split of the words; inversion of the morphemes etc. These nonce words in the Chinese modern poetry reflect the characteristics of Chinese prosodic word formation. These words have such functions as naming, increasing information density and being the style marker.Syntactic "defamiliarization" involves long and complicated attributives, addition of auxiliary word "de"; the use of some additional elements; deletion of the subject, the predicate or the object; deletion of the numeral or classifier; deletion of function words such as auxiliaries, conjunctions and prepositions; conversion of nouns, verbs and adjectives; unconventional classifiers; irregular word order; adjacent and spaced repetition etc. The main sources of the above defamiliarized syntactic phenomena are Europeanized Chinese and ancient Chinese, revealing its characteristics of "parataxis". From the cognitive perspective, conversion and NP juxtaposition are the result of the process of decategorization during which the properties and functions of the words have changed; and the covert or overt use of the auxiliary "de" is related to the information focus.Semantic "defamiliarization" mainly involve the unconventional collocation of modifer-modifee, subject-verb, verb-object and predicate-complement. Such defamiliarized collocation is attributed to the semantic substitution, including the substitution between [+concrete] and [+abstract], between [+animate] and [-animate] and between different senses; moreover, the referent meaning of the words in the collocations become weak and opaque with multiple interpretations. Cognitively speaking, defamiliarized collocation is realized linearly by blending and haplology, which is base on the mechanism of conceptual integration.The theoretical implications of the "defamiliarization" in modern Chinese poetry lie in the perspectives of language evolution, rules, mechanisms and linguistic values.As for the language evolution, the defamiliarized poetry language has the possibility of triggering a certain type of language evolution; and it reflects the evolution stages of Chinese vocabulary and grammar; and some prosodic nonce words are being at the grammaticalization stage of "from phrase to word".From the perspective of language rules,"defamiliarization" seems to have violated some certain rules, but actually it obeys some other rules at a higher level, taking the characteristics of Chinese language system as the basis. For example, nonce words follow the rules of prosodic word formation, namely, the Chinese morpheme is of single syllable and the standard foot is disyllabic, and so the nonce words are the outcome of the creative use of lexical rules. And syntactic defamiliarization destroys the conventional order or sentence integrity, changes the syntactic function of the words and violates the theta criterion and the economy principle, but these violations are based on "parataxis" of Chinese. Defamiliarized language is rule-controlled innovation and it is a kind rebellion licensed by rules.As for the language mechanisms, due to the mutual effect of analogy mechanism, symmetrical mechanism and regulation mechanism, when breaking a rule, the defamiliarized language and rules of higher levels achieve harmony and unity.When it comes to the linguistic value, defamiliarized language is to try the new forms and to detect the edge of the grammar rules. It had provided linguistics studies with a new starting point and perspective; what’s more, the unconventional temporary forms of language have great significances to linguistic theories, and it should be incorporated into the cline of language study.In short, poetry is a special innovative language and it is a window for us to know more about the rules of language."Defamiliarization" of the poetry is the result of some limited forms of operation at various levels, which causes deviation or violation controlled by the general characteristics of language and some certain rules at higher levels. Therefore, freedom is relative and limit is absolute. It reflects the rule of language changes or evolution to a certain extent. Based on the observation, description and interpretation of the linguistic coding of "defamiliarization" in modern Chinese poetry at the lexical, syntactic and semantic collocative levels,"defamiliarization", as a literariness, has been explained further from linguistic point of view, the characteristics of the language of modem Chinese poetry have been investigated to a certain degree, and what’s more, the characteristics and rules of Chinese lexicon, syntax and semantic collocation have been revealed in a more detailed way.