There's an obvious sense in which they understand poetic languageto be that in which form is predominant and practical language to be that in which content is predominant, but the Russian formalists see it in a slightly different way.

他们认为,诗歌中形式占主导,实用语言中内容占主导，但是俄国形式主义者们不这么认为。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选

Now, let me just make the last point I want to make about this, and that's that because language is material, it has form, it has both closedness and possibility, it's susceptible to the workings of craft, it's also unpredictable. Tosses mobius strip on floor.

让我说关于此事的最后一个观点吧，正因为语言是物质的，它有固定模式，它没有尽头又充满可能，它易受,工艺品的影响，它同时也是不可预知的。

耶鲁公开课 - 1945年后的美国小说课程节选