Linguistic creativity of the avant-garde: language functions in literary and advertising discourses

Abstract

The article departs from two non-referential functions of language — the poetic (expres­sive) and conative (appellative) functions — described by many linguists starting from Ro­man Jakobson and Karl Bühler. Their combined effect is shown using examples of linguistic techniques from the two types of discourse — the Russian literary avant-garde and the avant-garde advertising-propagandа — outreach. A discursive analysis of Russian literary (experi­mental) and advertising (avant-garde) texts is carried out from the standpoint of the theory of linguistic creativity. For each of the working subcorpora (artistic and advertising discourses of the 1910—1930s), the authors distinguish macro-discursive, micro-discursive and inter-discursive parameters that affect linguistic innovations at different levels — from phonologi­cal to pragmatic. It is concluded that the strategy of delayed, de-automated perception is im­plemented in the experimental literary discourse. It is achieved by focusing the message on its own form (the implementation of the poetic function). In the avant-garde advertising, the message should be as clear as possible in its form and should be easily perceived by an ad­dressee (the implementation of the conative function) not to focus attention on the text but rather on the action that the reader is expected to perform on the object of reference.

Keywords

• poetic function
• conative function
• artistic discourse
• advertising discourse
• parameters of linguistic creativity