Defamiliarization

Defamiliarization or Ostranenieis the artistic technique refers to the literary

device whereby language is used in such a way that ordinary and familiar objects
are made to look different. It is proposed by Victor Skhlovsky in his “Art as
Technique”. It is a process of transformation where language asserts its power to
affect our perception. It is that aspect which differentiate between ordinary usage
and poetic usage of language, and imparts a uniqueness to a literary work.
Defamiliarization serves as a means to force individuals to experience the
everyday, the ordinary in new ways through the use of artistic language. The artist
creates a shift in the normal, anticipated form of perception and by doing so
reveals the world anew.
According to Shklovsky, the technique is meant the challenge the reader’s (or
viewer’s) expectations and jar their sensibilities. As a consequence, the reader is
forced to see from a different perspective and appreciate the form of the text and
not just its context or meaning. As Aristotle said, “poetic language must appear
strange and wonderful.”
Although the concept of defamiliarization was earlier advocated by the Romantic
critic Coleridge in his “Biograpiha Literaria” (1817) it was conceived in terms of
subject matter and in novelty of expression. The formalists, however, endorse
defamiliarization effected by novelty in the usage of formal linguistic devices in
poetry, such as rhyme, meter, metaphor, image and symbol. Thus literary
language is ordinary language deformed and made strange. Literature by forcing
us into a dramatic awareness of language, refreshes our habitual perceptions and
renders objects more perceptible.
An example of defamiliarization is T.S Eliot’s use of Greek, Latin, German and
other languages in “The Wasteland”, which forces the reader to become a more
active participant in the process by having to make an extra effort to decode the
strange and exotic word in order to understand the poem. One is never allowed
to fall into a comfortable lull and be a passive listener/reader when dealing with
T. S Eliot.