Lecture – Olga Sokolova: "Linguistic pragmatics of contemporary poetry in the age of new media"

The DFG Center for Advanced Studies “Russian-Language Poetry in Transition” (FOR 2603) cordially invites you to a lecture with Prof. Dr. Olga Sokolova streamed live via Zoom. Please register by e-mail with Anna Fees (anna.fees@uni-trier.de) no later than July 13th, 2021, to receive the stream’s access data.

In this presentation, I consider the new trends in contemporary online poetry. The talk addresses the issue of linguistic pragmatics of contemporary poetry. The increasing role of pragmatics in poetic discourse goes back to the “performative turn” of the 1960s-80s. According to L. Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and É. Benveniste, a linguistic utterance can transform both the perception of the addressee and reality in general. This shift influenced not only linguistics but also poetry. The idea of the new communication model of contemporary poetry is grounded in R. Jakobson’s conceptual framework. Digital interface conveys the new communication forms and displays the transformation of all communication parameters, including the dominance of information channels and modification of communication roles.

Internet demonstrates the format of an “open” semiotic structure and “open” interaction including constantly updated content and “turn-taking” form of a conversation between author of the message (poetic text) and addressees (“users” and “followers”). The text itself turns out to be open to comments, including metapoetic ones. The transcoding of poetry platforms from paper to digital media manifests itself in the new media formats, including “hypertext poetry”, “micropoetry”, “online video poetry”, “media hybrids”, etc. It is widespread not only in the field of poetry but also in the field of critical practices such as critical poetry blogs and critical telegram channels like “Metajournal”.

Developing the concept of poetic pragmatics, we explore the most relevant linguistic pragmatic parameters, including “deictic shift”, unusual usage of discourse markers, and modal verbs. In considering the present-day situation, we investigate the new poetic pragmatics in the era of the pandemic. It is a consistent theme of recent studies in the humanities that major social shift brings a discursive one in the era of the pandemic. Texts published during the pandemic focus on the experience of lockdown. These are books of the leading American Language poets: Barrett Watten’s “Notzeit (After Hannah Höch)” (2020) and Charles Bernstein’s “Topsy-turvy” (2021), the book by contemporary Italian poet Valerio Grutt “l’amuleto. appunti sul potere di guarigione della poesia” (2021), pandemic art-platforms (https://www.pandemia-art.com/250/#unghigno0), and special issues of literary magazines (“Nosorog” #16. 2021). The study of Barrett Watten’s “Notzeit” examines the poet’s idea of “zero point” and “not time”” indicated by pragmatic markers of transcoding subjectivation and addressing.