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A Structuralist Without Peer, June 28, 2011
This review is from: Language in Literature (Belknap Press) (Paperback)
Roman Jakobson was one of the founders of a literary and linguistic worldview called Structuralism. Those, like Jakobson, who believe in its precepts, see the world as a hierarchy of structural units. When these units are identified, no attempt is made to pass moral judgment on their beauty, efficiency, or value. Structuralists are interested only in connecting the dots from one structure to another so as to bring to the surface a previously unsuspected Grand Unified Theory that would account for all aspects of human existence. Jakobson's focus was only on the linguistic application, but those who followed him quickly saw the ramifications for their own respective disciplines. For example, Jakobson's associate Claude Levi-Strauss applied its techniques to cultural anthropology.In LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, the reader is treated to an ecletic choice of the best of Jakobson.
Jakobson was fascinated by the linguistic implications of a theory with such a seemingly unlimited scope. Jakobson enlarged on the basic Structuralist principles of Ferdinand de Saussure, who envisioned that all aspects of human existence could be explained as being a part of an interlocking series of overlapping systems, all of which emphasized the position of an element rather than any subjective labeling of worth or value. Since Jakobson's training was in linguistics, it occurred to him that much of the complexity of human interaction could be reduced if human beings knew more about how they communicated with each other. Out of the hundreds of books and scholarly articles that Jakobson wrote over a period of decades, he is best known for two articles: "Linguistics and Poetics" and "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances." It is in these two articles that one may find the core of his beliefs that language and linguistics impact heavily on day to day human existence.
In "Linguistics and Poetics," Jakobson states that linguistics and verbal structures are intimately related. Thus, as poetics is one type of verbal structure, it follows that linguistics may be used to explicate poetry, and by extension all of human verbal discourse: "Poetic features belong not only to the science of language but to the whole theory of signs, that is to general semiotics." If one accepts that the relation of word to world may justifiably be applied to all kinds of discourse, then linguistics clearly has a universal connection to the entire spectrum of human endeavor. Part of this potential for universal human discourse has its roots in de Saussure's terms of syntagmatic and paradigmatic signs. In a syntagmatic sign relation, the focus is on the "where" or the physical positioning of a word for a contextual meaning. In a paradigmatic sign relation, the focus is on the choice of the word chosen. Thus, the meaning of the sentence hinges on the synonym that was not chosen solely because that rejected synonym was not "close" enough to warrant inclusion. Jakobson takes the two terms of syntagmatic and paradigmatic and relates them to synchrony and diachrony respectively. Synchrony refers to visualizing a word or a text in one single point of time--the "now" that does not change over time. Thus, a "great" author like Shakespeare is to be considered great now and forever. Diachrony refers to visualizing a word or a text over a very long period of time, the meaning or appreciation of which will change. Thus, a not-so-great author like Sir Walter Scott will probably undergo a frequent reassessment about his worth and reputation.
The problem that even linguists have with uncovering a unity of language is to first uncover a series of interlocking sub codes of language, all of which are grounded in and characterized by different functions. These functions may be schematized thusly:
CONTEXT
(referential)
ADDRESSER MESSAGE ADDRESSEE
(emotive) (poetic) (conative)
CONTACT
(phatic)
CODE
(metalingual)
Though all of these functions must exist for a message to be transmitted as intended, not all of them are equally dominant. Indeed, usually only one at a time is linguistically "in charge." The intended meaning of the message often hinges on which one is in charge. The middle four collectively make up the intended message. The ADDRESSER is the sender/writer/speaker while the ADDRESSEE is the receiver/reader/listener. The CONTEXT is the totality of needed referential information against which the message must be judged and evaluated. The MESSAGE in a linguistic sense is the word or text to be transmitted. One must keep in mind that this message need not be the meaning of the addresser. The meaning of the message may fluctuate depending on how the other five functions interact. In other words the meaning behind the addresser's mind may be drastically different from how the addressee interprets it. The CONTACT is the link, usually from print to eye (though in a non-linguistic context it may be psycho-social such as a lecher winking at a pretty girl.) The CODE is the level of English used in the message. A code may be hip-hop, scholarly jargonese, journalistic who-what-when-where-why, or any of the myriads of sub codes that constitute the English language. Jakobson uses synonyms for the above six functions as written in lower case in parentheses.
Since Jakobson's interest lies in matters literary and poetic, he uses the above six functions to draw the reader into understanding that poetry most often tries to emphasize the sound patterns, diction, and syntax of words. This focus on such emphasis he calls the poetic function, which oddly enough, is not confined to poetry at all. It is present in nearly all arenas of verbal structure. The more that the poetic function uses these sound patterns to emphasize their formal properties the less important becomes the referential significance. This six part linguistic model of verbal communication has a good news/bad news component. The good news is that it clarifies much of the messy and muddled process that we call verbal interaction. The bad news is that Jakobson ignores the differences between spoken and printed media. The act of speaking tends to have all six functions in reasonable clarity, but print media need not have all of them.
In "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances," Jakobson uses his linguistic expertise to suggest a viable method by which children afflicted with aphasia might be taught how to overcome their respective learning disabilities. He notes that language loss among aphasiacs is due to a polarity in linguistic performance which is the result of an oscillation between two polar types. Jakobson takes the twin concepts of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations and connects them to metaphor and metonymy. With metaphor, the writer uses an analogy or likeness between the targeted word and its metaphorical substitute so that one becomes the other: man = mountain or love = sickness. With metonymy, the writer uses association so the targeted word becomes related to its metonymic equivalent via cause and effect (hunger and food) or part to whole (crown and king). Jakobson learned that aphasiacs often have difficulty with learning words that are contiguous or back-to-back (syntagmatic) or relational (paradigmatic). They can do one or the other but not both at the same time. From this, he concluded that the corrective measures needed to overcome aphasia had relevance to universal discourse. All literary forms thus tended to gravitate toward one or the other linguistic poles.
Jakobson's theories on language and linguistics blazed brightly until the 1970s when they went out of favor with the appearance of the deconstructionists who argued that Structuralism was too rigid in that it attempted to find a Grand Unified Theory of language that would account for all human endeavors. Such an attempt, they argued, had to fail since Structuralism was based on the predictability of human beings and their steady state of thinking. Deconstruction, by contrast, demanded a world view that saw humanity as fragmented and therefore unpredictable. Still, Roman Jakobson and his theories are important as one of the foundations of critical theory.
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