The artistic charm of literary works is not only reflected in the profound theme content, but also in the artistic expression of literary discourse. Aesthetic discourse can often express the author's thoughts and feelings vividly and give readers Enjoy endless art. To create aesthetic discourse well, we should use "defamiliarization" language. It refers to an artistic method in which the author breaks certain language conventions and expresses the meaning of the work in language that may be ungrammatical or even difficult to understand, but can arouse people's interest, thereby achieving a strong aesthetic effect. Writers try their best to process ordinary speech into "defamiliarized" language that is resistant to people to attract readers. Therefore, Chinese teachers should pay special attention to "defamiliarizing" language when teaching literary works, and guide students to understand the meaning of the text through "defamiliarizing" language, including English and Chinese.
The author believes that three types of "defamiliarizing" language should be paid attention to when teaching literary works.
1. Word "defamiliarization"
This category can be divided into three subcategories: defamiliarization of parts of speech, defamiliarization of rhetoric, and defamiliarization of word collocations.
Example 1. On the scabbed wounds, green branches are being raised like flags. ("The Feeling of Spring" by Wang Yalin)
The word "green" is an adjective used as a noun. It refers to the newly born all things with the characteristics of plants that have just sprouted, and vividly describes the revival and vitality of life. It is defamiliarization through the use of parts of speech.
"Scab wound" is a metaphor for the earth that has experienced the ravages of winter. It has become "scabbed", indicating that the wound is about to heal and recover. The earth that has experienced devastation is eager for the coming of spring to heal the wound. The metaphor is original and hints at the theme, and the rhetorical defamiliarization is used to achieve the defamiliarization of words.
Raised "flag-like", giving new meaning to common metaphors. "Flag-like" describes the irresistible recovery of all things and the powerful vitality. "Flag" also refers to the symbol of the recovery of all things in spring. The strangeness of this metaphor brings about the strangeness of the words.
Throughout the sentence, the author uses two methods: defamiliarization of parts of speech and rhetorical defamiliarization to fully express the author's feelings about spring, that is, his yearning for spring and his love for spring's tender care.
Example 2. We tied up our thatched cottage, and some gentle poems began to fall. The birdsong of the village penetrated the cold smoke and came to the shore. ("Tao Qian" Cong Ming)
This sentence expresses the author's yearning for the poetic elegance possessed by Tao Qian and the idyllic life in Tao Qian's poems. In Tao Qian's former residence, he walked into the small thatched cottage and repaired it himself, and the author's retro sentiment naturally emerged. Then Tao Qian's poems appeared in the author's mind one by one. How can "poetry" be "open and clear"? But the author uses the natural phenomenon of "blooming and falling" to express the emergence of verses in his thoughts one by one, as scattered as flowers blooming and falling. This "disharmonious" collocation is the defamiliarization of word collocation.
"Birds singing" and "coming from the shore", the auditory experience of birds singing is synesthetized with the visual experience of water lapping at the shore, showing a warm picture, with birds singing quietly. It comes, just like the waves of the sea rising and falling, constantly lapping the shore and tapping your heartstrings. The use of synaesthetic rhetoric makes the abstract sound visualized and full of dynamic beauty, taking us from the limited The space brings infinite aesthetic conception and gives people a refreshing feeling at the same time, which is a rhetorical defamiliarization.
Example 3. The night wind, full of sorrow and resentment, wets my heart. ("Sister, that night I divined your return date from the zodiac sign of a flower" North Shore)
The abstract noun "sorrow" is paired with the specific action of "wetting" here, which violates the Grammatical principles lead to the defamiliarization of word collocations. "Wetting" vividly illustrates that this "sorrow" is not like a downpour pouring on the heart, washing away all hope and happiness, nor is it like a continuous drizzle that beats the soul and tortures the feelings for a long time. This kind of impact of sadness touches the sensitive pain of emotions from time to time, so it can give people more painful memories than the previous two.
2. Defamiliarization of sentence patterns
It is divided into three subcategories: rhetorical defamiliarization, style cross-penetration defamiliarization, and extraordinary sentence composition defamiliarization.
Example 4. The stars are still the same stars, the moon is still the same moon, the mountain is still the same mountain, the river is still the same river, the roller is the roller, the vat is the vat, the father is the father, and the mother is the mother. . ("Fence, Woman and Dog")
On the surface, the lyrics say some useless and repetitive words. However, it is the verbosity and repetition of this sentence pattern that creates the perception of the listener. The resistance prolongs the perception time, allowing the viewer to experience the hazy and remote feeling repeatedly, and is brought into the realm of rural life. The peace, complexity and even helplessness of life are immediately presented, which is a rhetorical defamiliarization of sentences.
Example 5. The People's Liberation Army crossed the Yangtze River, and the American colonial government in Nanjing dispersed like birds and beasts. But Ambassador Stuart sat still, staring with his eyes open, hoping to open a new store and make a profit... In short, no one paid attention to him, leaving him "alone, hanging by the shadows", with nothing to do, so he had to Pick up your bag and walk. ("Farewell, Leighton Stuart" by Mao Zedong)
The use of the classical Chinese introductory phrase "like birds and beasts scattered" very concisely portrays the image of the American colonial government fleeing in panic.
"But the Ambassador sat still, watching with his eyes open, hoping to open a new store and make a profit." The colloquial description highlights Stuart's greedy face and deepens the irony. Unwilling to fail but unable to escape defeat, Leighton Stuart could only end up "alone and alone". Another application of classical Chinese sentences effectively mocked the isolation of the enemy. "Pick up the bag and walk", the colloquial description vividly describes Stuart's embarrassment. The author of this text adopts the method of "cross-penetration of genres", interweaving literary genres, spoken genres and general written genres, achieving a humorous and meaningful effect.
Extraordinary sentence formation is a new defamiliarization technique that appears in contemporary novels. It refers to breaking through general grammatical norms and special grammatical norms to form sentence groups. It is mainly reflected in: writers use a variety of writing techniques to strengthen, weaken or conceal the focus of information, so that readers can experience the strong, cold or hidden meaning of the work.
"Strengthening" means that writers use various writing techniques to make the focus information in the work more prominent.
Example 6. Eyes. Eye. Eye. Confused eyes. Angry eyes. Eyes of fear. Pleading eyes. Numb eyes. Bloodshot eyes. Eyes of death. Dead yet alive eyes. ("Galaxy" by Liu Xinwu)
The writer uses the technique of exhaustive enumeration to lay out various forms of "eyes", which greatly expands the reader's psychological capacity and gives people a feeling of being crowded and dizzying. Intensify the focus information to release strong emotions.
"Weakening" is exactly the opposite of strengthening. It is to spread and separate the focus information as much as possible. If strengthening is sugar + sugar, then weakening is sugar + water.
Example 7. She stood there. Let the blood flow. long time. She was almost frozen. ("Gone with the Wind" by Zhao Mei)
The author allows the semantics to diverge, and the clever pauses weaken the focus information, thereby reducing the reader's tension and diluting the shocking feeling. If this sentence were written in an intensified way, it would probably intensify the reader's emotions and fail to achieve the author's subjective wishes.
Dropping means that the writer deliberately omits key words due to the inconvenience of explaining the actual situation, and uses meaningless interjections to combine sentences to hide the focus information, so that readers can appreciate the profound meaning.
Example 8． "Then, you have to say: 'Ah! Look at this child! How...ah! Haha! He-He-He...He He He!'" ("Li Lun" Lu Xun)
The semantics of this paragraph fall off intentionally or unintentionally, and interjections with no actual meaning are added in, which seems to be discontinuous, giving the reader ample room for imagination.
It should be emphasized that rhetorical defamiliarization refers to rhetoric in a narrow sense, that is, the defamiliarization of figures of speech such as metaphor, personification, repetition, and parallelism. Therefore, it exists not only in the defamiliarization of words, but also in the defamiliarization of sentence patterns. Rhetorical defamiliarization is the most important means of pursuing strangeness.
3. Defamiliarization of chapters
The most prominent one in this category is the defamiliarization technique of sentenceless reading.
Example 9． Three days ago, that is, five days ago, one year ago, two months ago, she, that is, he, had cervical spondylosis, which is spinal disease, dental caries, dysentery, vitiligo, breast disease, which is good health, longevity, and no disease. ("Lai Jin" by Wang Meng)
The coherent and sentenceless reading form embodies the special meaning of the work. "Three days" and "five days" coexist with "one year" and "two months", "she" and "he" coexist, "cervical spondylosis", "vitiligo" and "prolonging life" coexist. The sentenceless reading provides complex and cumbersome psychological stimulation to the speech recipients, expressing contradictory and confusing meanings.
Another form of chapter defamiliarization is the stream of consciousness technique. Novelists often break the chronological structure and use a writing method in which the past, present and future are sometimes inverted and sometimes interpenetrated, creating a huge psychological and aesthetic distance between readers and the text, thus attracting readers to experience the taste of absurdity and confusion. This writing method is clearly reflected in the description of the chaotic consciousness of the idiot Benji in the famous work "The Sound and the Fury" by the American novelist William Faulkner. The author has achieved a typical example of chapter defamiliarization in the form of a 20,000-word sentenceless stream of consciousness. . There is also a wonderful description in "The Spot on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf, a stream-of-consciousness novelist used in high school textbooks.
In the 1930s, the Prague School in Europe believed that the characteristic of literary language is the distortion of standard language for aesthetic purposes. "Defamiliarization" is to achieve this kind of distortion and create the ultimate rich aesthetic connotation. However, it needs to be pointed out that in pursuit of novelty and weirdness, individual writers deliberately violate logic and contextual requirements and write so-called "defamiliarized" language. This kind of "extremely alienated" language that ignores aesthetic principles and is unrestrained is not recognized by readers and has become language garbage. It not only fails to express the connotation of the work, but also hinders the healthy development of the language itself. When teaching literary works, Chinese teachers should guide students to correctly identify "stranged" language, extract the essence from it, remove the dross, and improve students' appreciation and writing skills.
(Author’s unit: Department of Chinese, Hebei Science and Technology Normal University)