Home › Glossary › Letter D

Defamiliarization

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Defamiliarization is the artistic technique of presenting common things in strange or unusual ways to enhance perception. It makes the familiar appear unfamiliar and new.

Detailed Definition
The Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky defined ostranenie as art's primary function. In poetry, it awakens readers from habitual perception by using unexpected imagery, syntax, or perspective. This estrangement forces a fresh engagement with the world, highlighting the materiality of language itself. Poetic devices like metaphors and neologisms are tools of defamiliarization, renewing our sense of reality through a heightened aesthetic experience.
Example
Example in poetry:
The use of a strange, compound word like "leaf-fall" in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins defamiliarizes a common phenomenon, making us see autumn differently; The dramatic, overly formal speech in a poem by T.S. Eliot, like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," defamiliarizes ordinary social situations, making them seem absurd; The abrupt, surreal shifts in imagery in a poem by Andre Breton defamiliarize the urban landscape, creating a new, magical reality; The focus on a mundane object, like a hospital room, in Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Waiting Room," defamiliarizes it by rendering it with extraordinary precision.
Additional Notes
Defamiliarization, or "ostranenie," is a key concept of Russian Formalism, articulated by Viktor Shklovsky. It is the artistic technique of presenting familiar things in strange, unfamiliar ways to disrupt habitual, automatic perception and to make us truly see the world anew. The goal of art, Shklovsky argued, is to make the stone "stony" again, to restore the sensation of life. In poetry, defamiliarization is achieved through unusual metaphors, strange syntax, unexpected perspectives, and the creation of neologisms. A poet might describe a simple act like "walking" as if it were a foreign experience, forcing the reader to re-imagine the activity. For poets, defamiliarization is a powerful tool to break the reader out of complacency and to use language as a means of fresh discovery. It is closely linked to the Imagist emphasis on concrete imagery and the modernist urge to "make it new."
Other Meanings of “Defamiliarization”
Also Known As
Ostranenie Making strange Defamiliarizing technique
Skip to main content