First, "defamiliarization" is a basic principle of aesthetics.
Literature is the art of language. How does language make literature become literature? Russian formalists say that the beauty of language makes it natural, and put forward that "the theme of literary research is not general literature, but' literariness'. What makes a work become literature?" Literariness here refers to the aesthetic function of language, which is closely related to the principle of defamiliarization. Example: "The sunset crawled by the big fish tank and saw a flaming fish/swallowed a gray pebble." The beauty of this poem lies in the novel narrative angle, which looks at the sun from the perspective of fish. The sun climbed into the fish tank. Through the water in the bottle, the sun became a pebble. In this way, the sun in reality is "alienated" as if it had never been seen before. This is the "defamiliarization" technique. Frankly speaking, if the sunset shines on the fish tank and the small fish turns red, there will be no such novelty and no attention from others. This method of expressing common things in daily life in a deviated or abnormal way to attract people's attention is "defamiliarization". In aesthetic theory, it is also called "distance produces beauty", and the language used in this technique is called defamiliarization language, that is, literary language. Why does defamiliarization produce beauty? Coleridge, a famous English poet, explained: endowing everyday things with novel charm, guiding people to observe beautiful and magical things in front of them by arousing people's attention to habit numbness, thus arousing a feeling similar to supernatural; The world is inexhaustible wealth, but we turn a blind eye and turn a deaf ear to it because we are too familiar and selfish. Although we have a heart, we can neither feel nor understand it.
Brecht, a German dramatist, defines the expression of the principle of "defamiliarization" as "alienation effect", while China's aesthetic concept is "turning decay into magic", both of which emphasize that beauty is a different and unfamiliar thing.
Second, the aesthetic characteristics of literary language defamiliarization
Defamiliarization theory is of great significance to literary aesthetics. Judging from the "autonomy" of literary language, its defamiliarization aesthetic characteristics are mainly manifested in the perceptibility of language images, the supernormality of language combination, the novelty of language experience and so on.
Perceptibility of 1. language images
Aesthetic objects always depend on sensibility. The sensibility of literary language first comes from the intuition of language symbols, and the receiver produces perceptual aesthetic effects through the visual intuition of language symbols. Therefore, defamiliarization language attaches great importance to the intuition of literary language, and the common method is to use a non-referential method to replace reference and identification when describing a thing. It seems that it is the first time to see this thing, so I have to describe it. For example, shklovsky said: "The defamiliarization technique in lev tolstoy's works is that he does not call things by their names, but describes them as if he had seen such things for the first time;" He treats everything as if it were the first time; Moreover, when describing things, he did not use the common names of various parts of this thing, but borrowed words used to describe the corresponding parts of other things. Literary writers call this non-referential and non-identifying way of describing the original form of things "seeing" language. In literary creation activities, writers never give up their "seeing" and the original characteristics of language. " He can' see' everything he writes, he just' writes while watching'. This kind of' visible' language is the most primitive and direct language, which retains the original features of poetry, so it can best reflect the image characteristics of literary language. For example, a cold dish in the chef's menu, two shelled preserved eggs are called "small two black marriages"; A cold dish, chopped pig's ears and pig's tongue is called "whispering" These "literary" dishes are full of aesthetic interest because of their vivid meanings, which makes us temporarily forget the appetite caused by reference objects. Taste this meaningful dish name and hit your eyes directly with intuitive and sensible language images. Full of life interest, making people laugh, refreshing and impressive. This shows that it is the expression of non-referential language to the language itself that makes people turn from rational cognition of language intention to perceptual feeling and experience of the language itself, which makes the language attractive at this time. Because it dilutes the signified meaning of language, and people's experience world is spiritualized, people feel the language object, but also understand the meaning hidden in language symbols, and thus have endless aesthetic enjoyment. The artistry of language comes from this, and the literariness of defamiliarization language comes from this.
2. Extraordinary language combination.
Extraordinary refers to an unfamiliar language. Because of its overall structure, it breaks the combination of linear arrangement of general languages through the memory and tension of words, making the semantics flexible, vivid and colorful. Contrary to common sense, language has a kind of exclusion, so it forms a "meaningful form". In fact, as early as thousands of years ago, Lao Tzu thought that "words are not beautiful, but beautiful words don't believe it". He saw that there is an inevitable connection between the extraordinary combination of languages and the aesthetics of languages. Eagleton, a famous aesthete, believes that "literary language is different from other forms of expression, and it' distorts' ordinary language in various ways." Under the pressure of literary skills, the common language is strengthened, condensed, twisted, nested, elongated and reversed. Language has become alienated, and because of this alienation, daily life suddenly becomes strange. "The purpose of" deforming "and" alienating "the common language here is to emphasize the supernormality of language combination. Because only the language after "deformation" and "alienation" makes "familiarity" become "strangeness", which in turn leads to aesthetic curiosity and desire to experience. The ancient poets in China have won the essence of the extraordinary combination of defamiliarization language, and their poems often contain novel and peculiar "beautiful sentences". For example, there are poems such as "the rain is wet after the willow clouds bloom, and the wind is fragrant at the bottom of the flowers", "The moon is cool and the dream is broken, and the maple smoke wakes up the birds and sings red". From the formal logic point of view, these poems are crazy, no matter what the conceptual connotation is. But from the perspective of poetry, they are all good poems with scenery and feelings. "That is to say, the variation and combination of language, although beyond the limitations of empirical facts, conveys new aesthetic information, makes people taste implicit poetry and get full aesthetic satisfaction. From the perspective of information theory, the more unusual the arrangement and combination of symbols, the greater the amount of information, the higher the uncertainty of interpretation and the stronger the attraction. From the perspective of reception aesthetics, readers' horizon of expectation consists of directional expectation and innovative expectation, which are both opposite and complementary. In order to seek novelty and novelty, readers naturally desire to break the directional expectation in reading and produce a "strange" aesthetic psychology. Therefore, in those excellent literary works, especially in modern trendy works, the author pays great attention to using the effect of extraordinary combination of languages to create aesthetic psychological distance and form unfamiliar language. Readers have gained a brand-new sense of language, but also left endless aesthetic charm.
3. Experience of language expression.
There are two sentences: "I'll wait under the tree." My waiting is a tree. Everyone can understand the meaning of waiting expressed by them. But as far as people's aesthetic experience is concerned, it is obvious that the second sentence is easier to grasp the reader's heart and can arouse a poetic association and aesthetic feeling. It defamiliarizes our waiting expression. The so-called experience refers to the psychological factors such as the perception, emotion and imagination of the aesthetic subject contained in the language. The ancients said that "words must be done", language is by no means a simple material shell of literature, but a direct existence of literature, which is closely related to people's inner experience, thoughts and feelings. Because defamiliarization attaches importance to the independent value of language, it is easy to give people a misunderstanding that language is far from reality and human feelings. In fact, defamiliarization language has no intention of denying the inextricable connection between the form of words and reality. The difference is that defamiliarization language not only shows its own strength and value, but also shows the relationship between language and reality in a unique way. That is to say, it is required to express new sensory experience in a new form, so that what is familiar and ubiquitous in daily life becomes a particularly unexpected thing, creating an unprecedented aesthetic feeling for the object, rather than rational cognition. Wang Anyi said with great experience, "To achieve defamiliarization, we should not only have the novelty of feeling and experience, but also the novelty of language. Defamiliarization is based on feeling and experience, with language and rhetoric as the means. " This shows that the experiential aesthetic value of language lies in that it can express the writer's unique aesthetic experience in an appropriate form, and through novel language sentences, people can experience an unspeakable beauty in their imagination. For example, "their voices are very smooth, reminding the blind of the feeling when holding a bowl." (Yu Hua's "The Past Is Like Smoke") "A sail in the distance is slowly kissing. I often hear the whistle of pigeons, gently sliding across the bright sky, lyrically." (He Liwei's "Disappeared overnight") "The puppy shrugged his shoulders barefoot and hurried along the yellow mud avenue of the maple tree. Everywhere fireflies, hay and leaves flew low in the wind, and the black rice fields whirled with mysterious undercurrents. The puppy's light body floated like an escaped fish. Moonlight floats like water. " These sentences are unique, novel, infectious and expressive. The mellow sound is expressed by the feeling of the blind holding a smooth bowl; Sailing slowly on the water, like a lover's gentle kiss; The pigeon whistle glides lyrically, making the hearing and touch transpose; Running in the open Yamashita, people are like small fish floating on the water, and they are skillfully used. The artistic conception of "the stars come down from the clearing and the moon comes up from the river" gives people endless interest. Such language not only increases the reader's perception difficulty and prolongs the perception time, but also enables people to obtain an aesthetic effect in repeated body odor. No wonder it is popular to say that old novels read stories and new novels read sentence patterns. This is because novel sentence patterns can make people pay more attention to language, taste language, and experience the aesthetic charm that can only be realized by understanding. At the same time, it also fully shows the charming charm of the autonomy of defamiliarization language.