POETICS AND RHETORICS

The text Poetics and Rhetorics (Poetique et rhetorique) is the introduction to the book Rhetorique generale (publ. 1970) by Belgian semioticians known as Group mu. According to their definition of "general rhetorics" seen as an analysis of techniques of language transformation characteristic of literature, the scholars focus on the problems of the form and on the specyficity of literary discourse, and especially on the discursive fading of the relationship between "words" and "things". Referring to the concept of literary language in which it is viewed as "deviations of the norm", Group mu identifies Jakobsonian poetic function of language with the rhetoric function. Within the framework of a polemics with Jakobson, they define the message not as an element of communication act but as a sum of its remaining five components. In addition, they introduce the term "metaboles" to refer to any type of change in any aspect of language. Metaboles prove to be "helpful" structures which free the speech from usable obligations and allow poetry to make its own reference.