Explanation
De-automatization is the interruption of habitual perception and language processing through which a form, object, or relation becomes noticeable again. Habit makes frequent expressions and familiar things functionally transparent; unusual syntax, unexpected naming, rhythm, or perspective can arrest that obviousness. In the formalist tradition this means more than novelty: perception is slowed or made difficult enough for constructed form to become experience again. Yet the effect wears out and depends on historical and cultural norms, since what appears strange to one group may be routine to another. The concept reveals that attention can be reorganised not only by adding information but by disturbing the ordinary route through which information is processed.
Movement of thought
1. A familiar form is first processed rapidly and almost unnoticed because expectation and routine already project its course. 2. A deviation in naming, arrangement, sound, or perspective obstructs that automated process and brings form into view. 3. Perceivers invest time again, compare possibilities, and discover features previously concealed by functional habituation. 4. A counter-test identifies the relevant norm and separates de-automatization from unintelligibility, error, novelty, and surprise alone. 5. The familiar returns altered: the object need not have changed, but the route by which it is perceived has been reorganised.
Scientific use case
Stylistics, literary studies, and psycholinguistics compare reading times, recall, and interpretation for conventional and deviant versions. Historical corpora establish which norm was genuinely available at a given time.
Example
Instead of “The city wakes,” a poem says, “Traffic lights blink the morning together.” The unexpected action slows routine and makes urban perception newly visible.
Counterexample
An accidental typo may briefly interrupt reading without opening a productive perception of form or object; disruption by itself is not sufficient evidence of de-automatization.
Distinction
Distinguish it from foregrounding as broader textual salience, estrangement as an aesthetic-political procedure, deviation, innovation, error, ambiguity, and mere surprise.
Effect on thought and perception
De-automatization slows routine processing, redirects attention toward form and relation, and can give familiar objects a newly perceptible strangeness.
Resonance
Habit falls out of rhythm; within the brief delay, what smooth processing had swallowed becomes audible and visible again.
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „De-automatization“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-METZ2-0005. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-METZ2-0005The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Historical background
Bergson's account of mechanical rigidity provides a neighbouring comparison, not the formalist category itself. In the inspected English excerpt of Shklovsky's Art as Technique (1917), habituated recognition is opposed to a more difficult and prolonged perception. The Tolstoy examples alter naming or perspective to make familiar objects perceptible again. This directly supports the Atlas movement from routine through interruption to renewed attention, without establishing that any disruption is artistically productive. The reproduced translation's exact edition and translator attribution remain unresolved, and the Russian original has not been collated. Bergsonian comic correction and Shklovskian perceptual renewal should therefore remain distinct theoretical operations.
How conceptual history changes the analysis
De-automatization is not disruption for its own sake, but a demonstrable change in the route of perception.
References for the historical section
- Henri Bergson, Laughter, authorised English translation by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell; Gutenberg transcription, print edition date not established · Chapters I and III: habit, rigidity and automatic behaviour
Selected historical witness, not a complete genealogy or a first English attestation. Atlas comparisons and applications are original editorial interpretations. Authorised English translation; the original French and print edition have not been collated. Bergson’s general theory of comedy is an attributed philosophical account, not an experimentally established universal law.
- B-SHKLOVSKY-1917 · Art as Technique (1917), reproduced English translation, PDF pp.1–4, especially pp.2–3