MODERN GAME WITH THE NORM: LANGUAGE SPACE OF UKRAINIAN POETRY OF THE END OF THE 20TH AND THE BEGINNING OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Abstract

The article tries to analyze the linguistic space of the Ukrainian poetry of the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. Its purpose is to trace tendencies in the language behavior of the Ukrainian poets of the period, especially in the treatment of the language norm. The new cultural situation caused mixing in texts of linguistic features of different social groups. Poetry, which used to be the sphere of refined language, now is filled with abnormal and deviant units. Kitsch, chaos, and destruction, which guided the poets of this period, are manifested in the destruction of the norms of literary language. Language deviation is the organic part of the poetic space of the period, one of the means of realizing its multilevel nature. On the one hand, it serves to homogenize, reconcile, and address the mass reader in their language, while on the other hand it is an instrument of irony and additional expression for the intellectual reader. The combination of high and mass cultures leads to the penetration of vernacular, surzhyk, obscene, and slang vocabulary in poetry, to the deconstruction of basic linguistic units. The research proves: the destruction of the generally accepted literary standard, the diffusion of language codes, the collage of stylistically heterogeneous language signs, the deconstruction of words have become part of the language game, an an organic component of the poets’ language behaviour, in which deviation becomes the new norm.