Linguo-Pragmatic Shifts in Contemporary Poetry: Russian-American Parallels

Abstract

The paper dwells upon the language and discourse processes in contemporary Russian and American poetry which focuses on “reformatting” the communicative situation coordinates under the influence of ordinary speech and the new media. The research suggests a linguo-pragmatic analysis of three Russian-American poetic vectors that characterize different strategies of subjectification, such as Gennady Aygi — Michael Palmer, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko — Barrett Watten, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis — Nika Skandiaka. These poetic practices manifest themselves in constructing a new communicative situation based on a referential shift along the lines of interiorization — exteriorization. Elaborating on this shift, we explore the interaction between inner speech, ordinary and poetic language, as well as the links between a poetic text and external (media)context. The unusual usage of pragmatic markers forms a new “poetic interface” and indicates the “transcoding” of the poetic subject in the coordinates of the actual communicative situation. Aygi and Palmer create different modes of poetic interface as a zone of active interaction between the addresser and the addressee, as well as inner speech, ordinary, and poetic language. In Dragomoshchenko’s and Watten’s poems, the “transcoding” of the subject manifests itself in various deictic shifts that mark complex relations of the subject with reality and language. The use of “graphic deixis” in DuPlessis’ and Skanidaka’s texts is informed by the impact of the Internet as a need to update the poetic statement in a new media-communicative situation.

Keywords

• language writing
• contemporary russian poetry
• poetic pragmatics
• deixis
• reference
• language of new media