Roman Jakobson

 Starting Questions: 

  1. What are the basic functions of language in communication?  What is the poetic function?

  2. Is there a common semantic operation in sentence-making and the making of poems, films, and the other cultural languages? 

 I. General Introduction

1) The difference between the Prague School and de Saussure: 

"Whereas Saussure had insisted that the study of the structural relations within and between languages as they exist at any given time (synchonistic study) and the study of the changes in sounds and their relations over time (diachronic study) were completely separate and mutually exclusive, the Prague School said:

'It is the structural analysis of language in the process of development -- the analysis of children's language and its general laws --  and of language in the process of disintegration -- aphasic language -- which enables us to throw light on the selection of phonemes, the distinctive features, and their mutual relations, and to get closer to the main principles of this selection and of this interdependence so as to be in a position to establish and explain the universal laws which underlie the phonological structure of the world's languages.'  [external link: Lectures on Sound and Meaning, 1942] (underline added; source: as above)

2) His Communication theory

"... the addresser sends a message to the addressee. To be operative, the message requires a context referred to, seizable by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a code fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and the addressee; and finally, a contact, a physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication. (Norton Anthology 1260)"

criticism:  Human commmunication is never one-way.  Communication is inter-subjective. (Walter Ong and other views of communication as dialogue)

3) His view of literature: "Linguistics and Poetics" --

The poetic is one of the six functions of language; the other five are: referential (context), emotive (speaker), conative (addressee), phatic (channel of communication), metalinguistic (explanation of the code). 

The poetic function vs. poetry: "The poetic function is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant, determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as a subsidiary, accessory constituent.  This function, by promoting the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects. (Norton 1264)  

e.g. "I like Ike"

"The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the asix of selection into the axis of combination.  Equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence." (Norton 1265)

II. "The Metaphoric and Mytonymic Poles"

Main idea: The metaphoric and mytonymic  are two aspects of language that are at work in our daily language (as is evidenced in aphasic disorders)  as well as literature, dream, arts and folklore.  
Method: His major argument is derived from clinical observation, and then he makes several analogy between daily language and poetic language, and then film, paintings and other cultural languages.   

Similarity disorder – inability to deal with “associative” relationships in language.

Contiguity disorder –inability to organize words into higher units (e.g. sentence)

e.g. 1) children's responses to a well-known psychological test--to respond to the noun shown to them.  
two types of responses: predicative ("the hut was burned out; the hut is a poor little house") and substitutive (cabin, hovel, etc.) --> two kinds of connection (similarity and contiguity)  in both their aspects (positional and semantic) --selecting, combining and ranking them.  

e.g. 2) verbal art : 

The metaphoric constructions dominate --Russain lyrical songs; Romanticism and Symbolism; D. W. Greiffith in films.  

The metonymic -- Realist author, metonymically digresses from the plot to the atmosphere and from the characters to the setting. .  .(1267); Einenstein and Chaplin in films; 

 


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