Category of obscurity: Taxonomy and linguocreative potential

The aim of the article is to analyze the category of obscurity, its taxonomic structure and linguocreative potential. The source of the material is artistic, primarily poetic, speech, which is characterized by an attitude to an acute stylistic effect achieved due to functionally relevant violations of communicative norms - the requirements of clarity in this case. The sample size is more than 300 units; while processing the material, a number of methods of linguistic analysis were used: descriptive, contextual, motivational, positional, and functional. The study showed that there are types of obscurity varying: (1) according to its mechanism: a) obscurity as difficulty of access to meaning; b) obscurity of choice arising in case of ambiguity of speech; (2) functionally: a) accidental; b) deliberate. The factors of obscurity can be divided into two groups: 1, Factors impeding the perception of speech expression: a) orally - incomplete pronunciation style; b) in writing - illegibility of handwriting, lack of spaces, etc. Metaplasms make it difficult to identify word forms in both forms of speech. 2. Factors impeding the perception of speech content: a) incompleteness; b) lengthiness; c) syntactic complexity; d) functionally limited vocabulary (archaisms and historicisms; xenisms; terms; neologisms, in particular hapax legomena); e) vocabulary that conflicts with the literary norm (elements of vernacular language; dialectisms; professionalisms; jargonisms); f) incoherence, whose sources are: i) selection of nominations based on acoustic proximity; ii) inversion; iii) selection of nominations based on derivational proximity; iv) semantically unmotivated connection of speech units; v) destruction of grammatical connections; vi) motivational complication of speech; vii) its intertextual complication; viii) its consituative complication. The factors of obscurity have a linguocreative potential. Thus, the holophrasic style is based on the lack of spaces; the figure of silence and the genre of deliberately incomplete text are based on the incompleteness of speech; the manipulative style of artificial bookishness on the syntactic and terminological complication of speech; abstruse language on the use of hapaxes and metaplasms; figures, genres and styles of deliberate absurd on incoherence: the genre of amphiguria is based on the semantically unmotivated connection of speech units, the technique of breaking syntax and the genre of a pile of words on the destruction of grammatical connections. The absurd should be understood as a heterogeneous category represented by two poles: 1) the concept of implausibility, which corresponds to: a) a number of figures: application, hyperbole, litota and metaphor realization; b) grotesque style based on these figures; c) factual errors; 2) the concept of alogism, which corresponds to: a) a number of figures: oxymoron, hysteroproteron, quasi-antithesis, zeugma; b) paralogisms. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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