Dialectization in the poetry of Guo Moruo

The article examines one of the manifestations of the general trend of vernacularization in the so-called “New Poetry” of the 1920s, namely, the infiltration of dialect elements into the poetry of Guo Moruo (1892-1978), one of the most notable authors of “New Poetry” and its active proponents. The language of Guo Moruo’s poetry incorporates vocabulary and grammatical structures characteristic of his native Leshan subdialect of the Minjiang dialect (Beifanghua). The dialect infiltrations are analyzed using the example of texts from the Goddesses (1921) collection. The linguistic structure of the collection is highly complex since its language includes elements of Classical Chinese, vernacular Chinese, and foreign loanwords, and also contains a certain number of the author’s neologisms. In addition to content words, Guo Moruo’s texts actively exploit the function words of the Leshan dialect. Using ge 个, a lexeme that usually acts as a quantifier (counting word) or, in some cases, as an indicator of uncertainty (analogous to the indefinite article), is also atypical for normative texts. Traces of the Leshan dialect can also be found in the grammatical features of the poems: the choice of word formation models and the syntax of interrogative sentences. In particular, there is a widespread use of the suffix -er 儿 (rhotacization of syllable finals), which in standard language is much less productive. In addition to the frequent use of -er in Guo Moruo’s texts, one might also observe the omission of the second morpheme of the predicate verb when juxtaposing the affirmative and negative forms in questions with an affirmative-negative type of predicate. Moreover, in the poetic oeuvre of Guo Moruo, one can find constructions with the atypical use of the indicator zai 在 / 再 at the end of the sentence, which some researchers interpret as inversion arising under the influence of rhyming requirements, as in traditional verse, and others as traces of syntactic models of Indo-European languages. The dialect factor is assigned to support a generally high degree of colloquialism - through non-standard linguistic elements and constructions, whose contrast with the standard variety is loaded with specific sociocultural associations. The limitation or inclusion of certain dialectal elements is intertwined in the complex process of creating a text in a hybrid lect, which represents a compromise between the emerging literary norm, local Beijing vernacular, and native dialect, which reflects not only the work of unconscious linguistic mechanisms but also the mechanics of linguistic reflection of the text’s author.

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