Introduction

Due to globalization, the rapid expansion of digital information flows, the intensification of global political instability, and the new contradictions generated by these processes, profound transformations are also occurring in the object of study within contemporary linguistics. One of these transformations concerns the emergence of new poetic texts and the problem of interpreting them through linguistic theory. These texts exceed the traditional scope of linguistic analysis and require new frameworks for understanding meaning, cognition, and language use.

To study, identify, analyze, and systematize these texts, linguistics must develop new analytical perspectives and conceptual tools. In what follows, under the framework of anti-representational writing in poetry, I investigate the linguistic principles underlying such texts and propose swarm semantics as a cognitive-semantic model for explaining their meaning structure.

Using Kazakh poetic discourse, specifically Ardakh Nurgaz’s poem Үрейлі түс (Dream of Fear/Nightmare (currently not available in English, only the Kazakh version exists)) – as the primary linguistic case study, this paper argues that anti-representational writing constitutes an emergent linguistic mode in which meaning arises not through linear composition but through distributed interaction among fragmented linguistic elements.

Anti-Representational Writing and the Transformation of Meaning

This anti-representational tendency can be further illuminated through Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of subject formation, particularly his tripartite model of the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary. In his account, the early period of infant development prior to the stabilization of the ego is marked by a radical lack of bodily and perceptual coherence. Before the subject assumes a unified image of the self in the Mirror Stage, experience remains fragmented, fluid, and unstable. At this pre-symbolic stage, the subject does not yet inhabit a fixed “I,” but exists within a shifting field of sensations and affects, where boundaries between self and world remain unresolved.

This liminal condition, in which identity and coherence have not yet crystallized, resonates strongly with the logic of anti-representational writing. Such texts mimic, at the level of language, a pre-egoic perceptual state in which meaning has not yet been stabilized by symbolic structures. In this sense, anti-representational writing does not merely disrupt representation but reactivates a linguistic mode analogous to the pre-symbolic instability described by Lacan—a zone of floating, unstable significations where language operates before the full establishment of rational subjectivity.

This theoretical implication finds resonance in Jean-François Lyotard’s critique of grand narratives in The Postmodern Condition (1984). Lyotard argues that the modern faith in totalizing, logocentric discourses grounded in a unified subject has collapsed, giving way to fragmented, localized, and heterogeneous discourse formations. The stability of the coherent “self” that underpinned classical representation is thus displaced by a plural, decentered subjectivity. Anti-representational writing, by rejecting narrative closure and unified meaning, aligns with this postmodern condition, embodying the dissolution of the sovereign subject within textual form.

Similarly, Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance and the endless deferral and drift of meaning (meaning as perpetual displacement) reinforce this perspective. Meaning in anti-representational writing does not rest in fixed semantic structures but is constantly deferred, displaced, and re-articulated within an open network of textual relations. The text no longer seeks to convey stable content but instead performs the instability of meaning itself, allowing semantic fluctuation to become its primary structural principle.

Thus, anti-representational writing can be understood not only as a literary strategy but also as a linguistic manifestation of deeper shifts in subjectivity, cognition, and epistemology, where the collapse of the unified subject, the instability of meaning, and the fragmentation of narrative coherence converge into a dynamic, open-ended, and self-generating poetic system.

Saussure and the Reconfiguration of the Sign

Ferdinand de Saussure, in his theory of the linguistic sign, argued that meaning emerges from the relationship between the signifier (signifiant) and the signified (signifié) within the system of language (langue) (Saussure, 1916/1983). Importantly, Saussure emphasized that this relationship is socially conditioned and historically variable rather than fixed.

Anti-representational poetry exposes a radical transformation of this relationship. In such texts, the traditionally stabilized balance between signifier and signified, often regulated by rational and logocentric structures, becomes destabilized or even collapses. The signifier begins to operate through its own material, sonic, and visual properties, activating latent possibilities that remain suppressed in ordinary discourse.

This development marks the emergence of a new phase in poetic language and introduces new demands on the reader’s cognitive and interpretive capacities. Ultimately, it calls for a revised linguistic theory capable of accounting for meaning that does not resolve but constantly emerges.

Anti-Representational Writing and Modernist Linguistic Critique

Modernist poetry produced several poets whose work challenges traditional language structures. A shared feature in their poetics is a critical stance toward both the linguistic system (langue) and the logocentric tradition supporting it.

Anti-representational writing radicalizes this critique by pushing linguistic expression beyond the limits of representation. This tendency corresponds conceptually with the theoretical insights of Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot, Jean-François Lyotard, and Giorgio Agamben, and resonates with the poststructuralist psychoanalytic thought of Jacques Lacan (Derrida, 1976; Blanchot, 1989; Lyotard, 1984; Agamben, 1999; Lacan, 2006).

However, rather than remaining within abstract philosophy, this study treats anti-representational writing as a linguistic phenomenon observable in concrete textual data.

Comparative Framework: Celan, Tranströmer, and Nurgaz

In the poetry of Paul Celan, Tomas Tranströmer, and Ardakh Nurgaz, we observe three interconnected yet clearly differentiated manifestations of anti-representational writing, each shaped by a distinct linguistic, historical, and cultural trajectory.

Paul Celan, a German-language poet who endured the trauma of the Holocaust and the experience of the Nazi extermination camps, develops a poetic language in which traditional semantic stability collapses under the weight of historical catastrophe. His writing demonstrates how the signifier–signified relationship becomes fractured in the face of collective trauma, resulting in a language that no longer represents reality but bears the scars of its destruction.

Tomas Tranströmer, a Swedish poet working within the Scandinavian modernist and postmodernist milieu, constructs a poetic discourse grounded in dream perception, spatial dislocation, and imagistic condensation. His language does not describe the world but reconfigures it as a shifting perceptual field, governed by dream logic and semantic ambiguity rather than narrative clarity.

Ardakh Nurgaz, writing in Kazakh within the post-Soviet, post-colonial Central Asian context, represents a third model of anti-representational writing. Emerging from the cultural and psychological aftermath of Soviet ideological structures, his poetry articulates a language of fear, fragmentation, and historical disorientation. Unlike Celan and Tranströmer, whose works are mediated through European modernity, Nurgaz mobilizes the internal resources of the Kazakh agglutinative language, using its morphological flexibility, participial structures, and syntactic fluidity to construct an autonomous poetic universe in which meaning no longer stabilizes.

Importantly, the works of these three poets demonstrate a fundamental shift of language from “айтып беру” (representation) to “көрсету” (manifestation). That is, language no longer explains or narrates reality; instead, it enacts it through fractured imagery, shifting signification, and psychological rhythm.

Through the comparative analysis of Celan’s Death Fugue, Tranströmer’s Baltics, and Nurgaz’s Үрейлі түс (Dream of Fear/Nightmare), we can trace how anti-representational poetic language emerges, develops, and eventually forms an autonomous linguistic system with its own internal logic and semantic dynamics.

Their work not only reflects a shared aesthetic tendency but also reveals a profound transformation in the function of poetic language itself. This transformation signals new directions for both linguistic theory and the study of poetic discourse.

Swarm Semantics: A Model of Emergent Meaning

Swarm semantics is a cognitive-semantic model in which meaning does not arise through hierarchical or linear narrative structures but through the nonlinear interaction of linguistic fragments, images, metaphors, and syntactic structures (Johnson, 2001; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).

In this model, semantic directionality is not imposed from a central organizational principle but emerges collectively through interaction, similar to swarm intelligence in distributed biological systems (Gordon, 1999).

This model is particularly suited to explain meaning construction in anti-representational texts, where meaning arises through interaction rather than representation.

Kazakh, as an agglutinative Turkic language, provides a particularly fertile environment for examining emergent semantic structures in anti-representational writing. Its grammatical architecture allows dense layering of meaning without requiring complex syntactic embedding or rigid hierarchical subordination. This structural flexibility plays a central role in enabling what this paper conceptualizes as swarm semantics.

One of the defining characteristics of Kazakh is its agglutinative morphology, in which multiple grammatical categories—tense, aspect, modality, person agreement, and voice—are encoded through linear suffixation. As is typical of Turkic languages, suffix chains can be extended productively, allowing a single lexical stem to carry a complex stack of semantic and pragmatic information (Johanson & Csató, 1998; Schönig, 1994). In anti-representational discourse, such morphological layering does not stabilize meaning but promotes semantic diffusion, where meanings proliferate vertically within a single form rather than resolving through syntactic structure.

Kazakh also exhibits relatively flexible word order, despite its default SOV typology. While neutral clauses follow head-final patterns, both scrambling and marked constituent ordering occur frequently under discourse-pragmatic pressures such as focus, topicalization, and emphasis (Kirchner, 1998; Johanson & Johanson, 2015). In Үрейлі түс, Nurgaz exploits this flexibility by destabilizing canonical linearity, allowing phrases and constituents to appear in positions that weaken syntactic predictability and strengthen semantic indeterminacy. In doing so, meaning is not anchored but circulates across the clause as a whole.

Another crucial feature of Kazak is its participial and converb system, which allows events to be expressed not as closed propositions but as suspended or evolving processes. Participial markers, such as -ған/-ген, -атын/-етін, and converbs, such as -ып/-іп, are widely used to encode simultaneity, backgrounding, continuity, and non-finiteness (Johanson, 1995; Schönig, 2011). In Nurgaz’s poem, these forms frequently accumulate rather than resolve, producing temporal and aspectual ambiguity. This allows meaning to exist in a state of continuous emergence rather than narrative closure.

Furthermore, Kazakh makes extensive use of modal and evidential constructions, often through periphrastic forms and particles such as түрі бар (“there appears to be”), which encode inferential or perceptual stance rather than factual certainty. Although evidentiality is not grammaticized to the same degree as in some Siberian or Andean languages, Turkic languages—including Kazakh—have rich resources for expressing epistemic distance and speaker evaluation (Aikhenvald, 2004; Johanson, 2000). In Үрейлі түс, such constructions contribute to the overall state of semantic suspension, supporting the poem’s refusal of ontological certainty.

Kazakh’s capacity for nominalization and metaphorical grammatical extension also plays a key role in the construction of Nurgaz’s poetic language. Abstract cognitive and emotional states (such as fear, silence, and weight) are frequently reanalyzed as nominal or quasi-agentive structures, allowing internal psychological processes to be syntactically externalized. This aligns with cognitive-linguistic observations that conceptual metaphors are often structurally supported by the morphosyntactic affordances of specific languages (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).

From a typological and cognitive-linguistic perspective, these characteristics suggest that Kazakh provides not only a culturally distinct poetic medium but a structural platform for modeling non-linear semantic emergence. Its grammatical properties resonate strongly with distributed models of cognition and meaning, in which semantic structure is not determined solely by hierarchy but by the interaction among morphosyntactic units (Evans & Green, 2006).

Thus, Үрейлі түс does not merely use Kazakh as an instrument of expression; rather, it activates and reconfigures its internal grammatical potentials to produce a linguistic system in which meaning emerges as a dynamic, swarm-like process. This demonstrates that Kazakh is not a peripheral language for linguistic theory, but a critical site for investigating alternative models of semantic organization in non-Indo-European languages.

Linguistic Analysis of Үрейлі түс (Dream of Fear/Nightmare)

1.1 Deictic Suspension and Temporal Dislocation

In the opening lines:

“Талай жылдың алдында…
 Алдымнан шықты.”
 (“Before many years… it appeared before me.”)

Nurgaz establishes a temporality that is structurally and cognitively unanchored.
 In Kazakh, temporal clauses and adverbials typically relate events to a clear temporal reference point, either explicitly (through calendar time, narrative sequence) or implicitly via verbal morphology. However, the phrase талай жылдың алдында (“before many years”) lacks such anchoring. The adjective талай conveys multiplicity and indefinite extension, rather than a measurable interval. As a result, time here is neither linear nor cyclic, but diffuse and floating.

This deictic vagueness results in what may be termed temporal undecidability. The reader cannot determine whether the event occurred long ago, outside of historical time, or in a psychological temporality detached from ordinary chronology. The effect is not merely poetic ambiguity; it reflects a linguistically encoded disruption of temporal reference.

From a cognitive-linguistic perspective, this disrupts the conventional time-as-line schema, in which events are located along a linear progression of past, present, and future (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Instead, temporal reference collapses into what can be conceptualized as a swarm-temporal configuration, where moments are not ordered but instead clustered, overlapping, and interacting.

In such a system, time no longer functions as an external container for events but becomes a fluid semantic field in which events circulate. This mirrors how temporality operates in dream cognition and traumatic memory, where temporal sequencing is fragmented and destabilized.

1.2 Participial Layering and Semantic Drift

The line:

“Қаны тиылған, қарауытқан
 жарадан мөлдір ай туып келеді.”

demonstrates one of the most linguistically significant strategies of the poem: participial layering.

In Kazakh, participles such as -ған / -кен often encode perfective or resultative states. However, Nurgaz uses them not to clarify temporal sequencing but to accumulate states simultaneously.

The participle тиылған (“stilled, clotted”) indicates a completed process, while қарауытқан (“darkened”) suggests a continuing or progressive visual state. These two markers operate together on the noun жара (wound), creating a temporally hybrid construction.

This produces what can be called semantic drift:
Instead of meaning moving from wound – blood – stillness – moon, multiple states are activated concurrently. The wound is not simply a source of pain. It becomes a site of overlapping temporalities and meanings.

From a cognitive perspective, this reflects nonlinear conceptual integration, where multiple semantic frames (injury, darkness, birth, illumination) are activated simultaneously. Rather than guiding the reader toward a convergent interpretation, the construction sustains semantic instability.

In terms of swarm semantics, this participial layering represents a core mechanism: meaning does not “develop”; it clusters. Semantic units do not replace one another, but coexist in a fluctuating interaction.

1.3 Deictic Instability and Subject Fragmentation

The lines:

“Араларындағы өзімді
 бірден тани алмадым.”
 (“I could not immediately recognize myself among them.”)

are linguistically crucial because they show how subjectivity itself becomes grammatically unstable.

In Kazakh, reflexive constructions usually reinforce the unity of the subject by marking a clear self-object relation (өзімді, өзіме, өзім). Here, however, reflexivity does the opposite: it reveals a rupture within the concept of subjecthood.

The subject is simultaneously:

●  the one who perceives,

●    and the one who fails to recognize.

This creates a linguistic split between:

1. the grammatical subject

2.   and the cognitive self.

This split is not just thematic. It is structurally encoded in the syntax.
 The subject position is occupied, but its referential stability collapses.

From a linguistic and pragmatic perspective, this constitutes a breakdown in deictic anchoring. The “I” no longer functions as the stable center of the deictic system but becomes a floating semantic component within the swarm.

Within swarm semantics, the subject is not a controller of meaning, but rather one element among others, such as image, sound, and temporality, all of which interact without a hierarchy.

1.4 Perceptual Syntax and Dream Logic

A defining feature of Үрейлі түс is its perceptual syntax, where sensory impressions are arranged without logical transitions.

For example:

visual perception – tactile perception – spatial displacement – emotional response

These are presented without causal connectors or narrative sequencing. The Kazakh language typically allows complex syntactic subordination, but Nurgaz avoids this, opting instead for paratactic alignment.

This mirrors the structure of dream cognition, where:

●  events do not follow causality

●    associations are based on contiguity

●    transitions are non-logical

●    and scenes transform without explanation

Linguistically, this removes hierarchies of subordination and coordination, creating a flattened syntactic landscape. Each perception exists on an equal structural level.

This supports the model of swarm semantics, where meaning is not guided by a dominant narrative or organizing principle. Instead, it emerges through the interaction of perceptual fragments, each contributing to a distributed semantic field.

The syntax imitates cognition rather than describes it. This is crucial: the text does not represent the dream. It structurally enacts it.

1.5. Aspect, Modality, and States of Suspension

A striking feature of Үрейлі түс is the systematic use of aspectual and modal constructions that suspend events between happening and non-happening.

For example, in lines such as:

“…түсетін түрі бар”
 (“it seems as if it will fall/down”)

the phrase түрі бар does not assert factuality, but introduces a modalized state of potentiality. In Kazakh, түрі бар functions as an evidential–modal construction implying appearance or likelihood rather than certainty. This is significant because the poem rarely presents events as completed facts. Instead, it places them in an ontological zone between reality and possibility.

From a semantic perspective, this generates modal suspension, where events exist in a state of being about to happen, not yet having happened, or maybe happening. Swarm semantics accounts for this by treating such markers not as peripheral modifiers, but as central components of the meaning network. Meaning does not move toward resolution but circulates within a field of potentiality (Agamben, 1999).

1.6. Negation and the Cognitive Construction of Absence

Negation plays a crucial role in shaping the semantic atmosphere of the poem. Consider the line:

“Құс емес, аспан…”
 (“Not a bird, but the sky…”)

The negation емес does more than simply deny a category — it actively produces semantic displacement. By refusing a stable reference (“bird”), the line forces a conceptual shift toward a more abstract and unstable referent (“sky”). In cognitive linguistic terms, this is not merely negation but category destabilization. The reader’s conceptual system is compelled to relinquish an initial frame and adopt a broader, less constrained one. This process supports swarm semantics: each negation does not close meaning but opens it into further semantic diffusion.

1.7. Lexical Repetition and Distributed Cognitive Echoes

Throughout the poem, Nurgaz repeatedly returns to motifs such as:

●  darkness

●    falling

●    silence

●    entrapment

●    weight

●    mirrors/doubling

●    fragmentation of self

However, these are not simple repetitions. They occur through lexically varied expressions rather than identical repetition.

For example:

●  shadow/darkness

●    voices/silence

●    self/reflection/mirror

●    fall/collapse/drift

From a cognitive-semantic perspective, this creates what can be described as distributed semantic echoing. Instead of a single dominant motif or symbol, the poem disseminates related concepts throughout the text in various linguistic forms. This reinforces your argument against hierarchical meaning and supports the idea that meaning in this poem emerges from the distribution of conceptual fragments over time, rather than from any single symbolic core.

1.8. Discourse Structure and Non-Progressive Sequencing

The poem is built not as a progressive narrative but as a sequence of loosely connected perceptual fields. There are no discourse markers indicating causal or temporal progression (e.g., сондықтан, содан кейін, кейін etc.). Instead, the poem relies heavily on juxtaposition:

vision – sound – movement – stillness – image – self-loss – landscape

Linguistically, this creates a non-hierarchical discourse structure, closer to what cognitive linguists describe as radial networks, rather than linear chains. In swarm semantics, this structure is not accidental: it represents a linguistic attempt to mirror how traumatic or dream-like cognition operates – not through linear narrative but through fluctuating perceptual clusters.

1.9. Embodied Cognition and Sensorial Grammar

Another important feature is the heavy use of bodily and sensory language:

●  touch

●    weight

●    falling

●    movement

●    breath

●    physical orientation

For example:

●  falling

●    floating

●    being pulled

●    being pressed

●    not being able to move

Rather than simply describing action, the grammar itself encodes bodily states. This links directly to embodied cognition theory (Johnson, 2001), where meaning arises through bodily experience structures. In this poem, linguistic structures simulate bodily sensation rather than describe it. This supports your shift from representation to manifestation: the text does not tell the reader what fear is. It linguistically enacts it. This embodied enactment is a crucial linguistic dimension of anti-representational writing, further strengthening your model of swarm semantics.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that anti-representational writing constitutes a distinct linguistic mode characterized by deictic instability, participial semantic layering, fragmented subjectivity, and nonlinear meaning construction. Rather than operating through hierarchical systems of reference and representation, this mode of writing reorganizes language around processes of emergence, instability, and interaction.

Through the concept of swarm semantics, this study proposes a cognitive-linguistic model that explains how meaning arises in such texts: not as a predetermined structure imposed from above, but as the product of distributed interaction among linguistic, perceptual, and symbolic elements. In this model, meaning is not located in any single sign, structure, or narrator, but emerges dynamically from the network of relations that language itself generates.

By focusing on Kazakh poetic discourse—specifically Ardakh Nurgaz’s poem Үрейлі түс (Dream of Fear / Nightmare), which fully embodies anti-representational writing, dream logic, and nonlinear semantic organization—this study introduces original material from a non-Indo-European, agglutinative language context into debates on meaning, representation, and cognition. The analysis demonstrates that Kazakh, through its morphological layering, participial structures, and syntactic flexibility, provides a powerful linguistic medium for realizing anti-representational strategies. This supports the relevance of such texts within broader discussions that harmonize with the ideas of thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, whose reflections on language, subjectivity, and representation continue to inform contemporary approaches to meaning.

At the same time, this study situates anti-representational writing within the broader conditions of the contemporary information age, the internet era, and the age of globalization. In this language itself, it is increasingly perceived differently. Whether this shift represents a new linguistic possibility, a new mode of orientation, or the emergence of unprecedented complexities and horizons is not yet fully understood. Nevertheless, it has become essential to re-examine language and text through a comparative perspective that considers both their historical forms and their present transformations, and to analyze how language today operates according to logics that differ fundamentally from its earlier configurations.

In this sense, the anti-representational poetic language examined in this paper does not merely reflect an aesthetic trend, but articulates a broader transformation in how language is experienced, conceptualized, and lived in the contemporary world.

Bayan Ardakh.

Ed.M. (Master of Education) in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) & Applied Linguistics

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