Have you ever noticed that our true intentions are hidden behind our words? We are constantly involved in situations in which communication dictates our relationships with people and, depending on of what you want to convey, you can change the speech according to the needs of the moment and put it into practice at language functions.
There are six language functions: conative, emotive, referential, factual, poetic and metalinguistic. Our object of study will be the poetic function of language, present in literary texts and in non-literary texts. Certainly, the poetic function is one of the most interesting functions, the one that allows us to produce beautiful texts permeated by images and words that build different meanings!
The poetic function is focused on the message itself: the word is the great protagonist. It can be found in Literature, in poems by great writers and even in a advertisement, where it is possible to play with the word and its meanings. Note the example of the poetic function of language in a poem by Paulo Leminski:
The poetic function gives new meanings to words, allowing the reader to make interesting sensory experiences
rabbit egg
Rabbit does not lay eggs,
who lays an egg is a chicken.
but i know a rabbit
which is really wonderful.
The eggs he lays,
you can't even imagine.
are chocolate eggs
or vanilla eggs.
Therefore, our rabbit
was kicked out of the family.
His father said: - My son,
this is chicken stuff.
The rabbit quickly responded:
- My father, it's not my fault,
laying an egg is my destiny.
If I can't lay eggs at home,
I prefer to put it alone.
And that's how the rabbit
left the house for the street,
laying an egg at Easter,
in everyone's dream.
Paulo Leminski
It was possible to observe, after reading Paulo Leminski's poem, that the poetic function is concerned with the sound of words, with the way in which they are arranged in the verses, stanzas and rhymes and with the elements that are related to our sensations. Now see how advertising can also appropriate the poetic function:
In the advertisement for the perfume Quasar, by O Boticário, we can see that there is a play with the words “Quasar” and “marry”
Note that this is not a simple advertisement, as advertisers used the poetic function to construct the meanings of the text. Did you notice the play between the words “Quasar” and “marry”? Well, new meanings were built, which allowed advertising to break with the traditional way we are used to seeing words. This is the poetic function, it makes us go beyond and see images and sounds in words.
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
