Roman Jakobson led the way in the development of structural linguistics in the twentieth century, a pioneer whose approach had a lasting influence on other well-known linguists, anthropologists, and literary critics. He was also one of the architects of phonology as it is understood and practised today. Roman Jakobson developed a communication model, which became a hallmark of his approach.
Roman Jakobson made important contributions to linguistics and developed structuralism as an approach in his work.
Phonology is the study of speech sounds.
Structuralism is an approach to the study of texts and culture which looks for underlying patterns.
Roman Jakobson biography
Jakobson was born in 1896. His parents were upper-middle class and Jewish. When Jakobson started studying linguistics, the dominant approach was diachronic; this meant that language was studied according to its development over time (dia- means through, and chronos means time in Greek; so 'through time'). Jakobson, after some contact with the work of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), took the opposite approach: the synchronic study of language meant the study of language at particular moments in time (syn- means' same' in Greek; so synchrony means 'same time').
After some time in Czechslovakia, in 1939, Jakobson escaped from Prague before the start of World War Two and went to Denmark. Later the same year, he went to Norway and then on to Sweden. After taking a boat from Sweden in 1941, he finally arrived in New York City, where he became an active member of the intellectual scene among émigrés in the city.
While in New York, he started to teach, and eventually, because of his work in structuralism and the growth of his reputation as an educator and intellectual, he moved to Harvard University to take up a lecturing position until 1967, when he retired.
Towards the end of his life, Jakobson worked at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) as Professor Emeritus.
Roman Jakobson theory
The situation in Russia in the second decade of the twentieth century (1910-20) shaped Jakobson's politics. The period was marked by revolutionary expectation, and the country experienced a period of revolution between 1917 and 1923, a period of dramatic political, social and economic change which would have a huge effect on the country for the next sixty years and beyond.
The Russian revolution happened after two civil wars early in the twentieth century and resulted in the abolishment of the monarchy and the establishment of a socialist government.
A socialist government is when the state (the government) owns most or all of the means of production in a country.
One of the most well-known aspects of Jakobson's work is his theory of communication functions.
Roman Jakobson communication model
Jakobson based his own communication theory on the work of Kark Buhler (1879-1963), which he expanded in new ways.
Buhler had developed a simple linear model of communication made up of three stages:
1. the sender of the message or communicative act,
2. the message or communication act itself, and
3. the receiver of the message of the communication act.
By extending this basic idea, Jakobson came up with a total of six elements or 'parts' of the communicative act. These six elements of communication, Jakobson argued, are essential if communication is to be successful.
They are:
- context
- sender
- receiver
- contact
- code, and
- message.
Each one of the six parts of communication is associated with a function.
These functions are:
- referential
- emotive
- conative
- phatic
- metalingual, and
- poetic.
Here is a breakdown of each of these six areas.
Referential: this goes with 'context' and is descriptive. This is the one you use to share information.
Emotive: this one goes with the sender of the message and is usually associated with interjections like 'Oh my' and 'Wow'. This one is really about the tone; it helps us work out the mood of the speaker/sender of the message.
Conative: this goes with the receiver of the message and is associated with commands ('Come here John'.).
Phatic: this one goes with the 'bits of pieces' of language which ensure that communication carries on; 'yup, ok, hey, and all examples of phatic language. Phaticlanguage is what we use when we want to check we have understood something the other person has said or to keep the flow of the conversation going.
Metalingual: this is about self-awareness in communication. Metalanguage is language that talks about itself. It is analytical and deals with word definitions and understanding what we are doing when we use language. It helps reduce ambiguity.
Poetic: this is aesthetic language. The poetic function is about how language is embellished to accentuate the message. It is used in poetry, plays and literature in general, as well as in marketing slogans and advertising campaigns.
Roman Jakobson structuralism
Jakobson was arguably the first linguist to use the term 'structuralism'. He coined the term in the 1920s as part of what was called the Linguistic Circle of Prague. Structuralism is, simply put, the practice of studying texts using a scientific approach and drawing on information from scientific studies of language.
The Linguistic Circle of Prague was a group made up largely of Russian emigrants to the city, including, as well as some Czech scholars. It was a forum for the study of language and literature. Together they developed structuralist approaches to the interpretation of literary texts. The Circle was founded in 1926.
Early structuralism differed considerably from the kind of structuralism which developed and became popular after the 1930s. Jakobson summarises his version of structuralism in this excerpt from a 1929 publication:
Were we to comprise the leading idea of present-day science in its most various manifestations, we could hardly find a more appropriate designation than structuralism. Any set of phenomena examined by contemporary science is treated not as a mechanical agglomeration but as a structural whole, and the basic task is to reveal the inner, whether static or developmental, laws of this system. What appears to be the focus of scientific preoccupations is no longer the outer stimulus, but the internal premises of the development; now the mechanical conception of processes yields to the question of their functions. (Jakobson, Romantic pan-Slavism — A new Slavistics, 1929b, p.11)
In part, Jakobson's use of the term structuralism was down to his, and other linguists', desire to use scientific terminology, thereby raising the seriousness of the field from the humanities to the sciences.
Such words were an important component in the scientific window-dressing that professional linguists constructed for themselves from the early nineteenth century onward. Perhaps for that very reason, it was not necessary that such key terms have [clear] meanings. … The very fact that it was non-committal may have made it an especially ideal slogan for the promoters of new methods of linguistic research in the interwar years and later who had otherwise very little in common. (Roman Jakobson and the Birth of Linguistic Structuralism, W. Keith Percival, in Sign Systems Studies, 39(1), 2011)
One further aspect of Jakobson's work which warrants attention is his work on Markedness. The term is used in linguistics to mean a word which stands out in some way. Jakobson used the term in phonology (the study of speech sounds) and grammar. He defined the marked sound as one which was dominant and an unmarked sound, its equivalent, but non-dominant, form. For example, a phoneme with a nasal tone would be characterised as 'marked', whereas a phoneme with no nasal quality would be characterised as 'unmarked'.
Roman Jakobson books
Roman Jakobson wrote a large number of books which have influenced countless numbers of people since their publication. Books by Jakobson cover grammar and syntax, phonology and phonetics, the study of signs and sign systems, linguistic analysis, literary analysis of Slavic literary texts, function in language analysis, semantics (the study of meaning in language) and child language, including some work on aphasia (problems people sometimes have with speech production or language in general).
Significant books include:
- Jakobson R., Child Language, Aphasia and Phonological Universals, 1941
- Jakobson R., Halle M., Fundamentals of Language, 1956
- Jakobson R., Six Lectures of Sound and Meaning, 1978
- Jakobson R., Language in Literature, ( ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy), 1987
Roman Jakobson - Key takeaways
- Roman Jakobson led the way in the development of structural linguistics in the twentieth century.
- His work in linguistics influenced a range of other fields in the area of structural analysis.
- One of the most well-known aspects of Jakobson's work is his theory of communication functions.
- Jakobson was arguably the first linguist to use the term 'structuralism'.
- Towards the very end of his life, Jakobson worked at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) as Professor Emeritus.
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