Roman Jakobson Research Paper

1. Brief Overview Of Jakobson’s Life

Jakobson was born in Moscow on October 11, 1896 and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 18, 1982. While still a student he helped to found the two groups known now as Russian Formalism. The Formalists called for an immanent analysis of literary works, with a focus on the properties that distinguish literary material from any other kind. In 1920, Jakobson went to Prague and in 1926 helped to found the Prague Linguistic Circle, the cradle of (functional) structuralism. For the Prague School, language serves for communication and thus its internal structure has to be studied from the standpoint of the tasks it performs. Jakobson first coined the term structuralism in 1929 as a cover term for this viewpoint and was a leading proponent of this highly influential twentieth century trend in linguistics and in many allied humanistic, social, and behavioral fields.

In 1939, Jakobson fled the Nazis and in 1941 went to the USA. He taught at the Ecole Libre des Hautes Etudes, New York, from 1942–46 and in 1943 he began teaching at Columbia University. In 1949, he obtained a professorial Chair at Harvard University. From 1957 on, he was also Institute Professor at MIT. He was President of the Linguistic Society of America in 1956 and received the International Prize for Philology and Linguistics in 1980 and the Hegel Prize in 1982.

2. Structural Phonology, Child Language, And Aphasia

During his Prague period, Jakobson and fellow Russian linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy argued that phonological systems are structural wholes, which have to be studied in terms of their relational properties, and that language change has to be seen in terms of systems. They investigated types of phonological systems and established the study of linguistic affinities between languages (Sprachbunde)—how languages that are geographically and culturally related may acquire traits in common (see Jakobson 1971a).

During this time Jakobson also turned his attention to the acquisition of phonology by children and its dissolution in aphasics. His monograph—Child Language, Aphasia and Phonological Universals (Jakobson 1941)—demonstrated that the order of acquisition follows the laws of typology: from universal to nonuniversal, unmarked to marked, simple (optimal) structures to more complex ones. He also showed that aphasic loss follows a reverse order.

3. Theory Of Distinctive Features And Functional View Of Sound

In his American period and with the aid of advances in acoustic phonetics, Jakobson developed his famous theory that phonemes such as /t/ and /d/ in ten and den and /b/ and /m/ in bat and mat are not the ultimate (smallest) constituents of language. Rather, the distinctive features are: the smaller properties of sound by which phonemes are differentiated from each other. For example, /t/ is differentiated from /d/ as unvoiced (voiceless) vs. voiced in many languages, and /b/ from /m/ as oral (nonnasal) vs. nasal. Jakobson also defined a small set of such (acoustic-perceptual) features that underlie the phonological systems of all the languages of the world (Jakobson et al. 1952, Jakobson and Halle 1956, Jakobson and Waugh 1979). He also showed the relevance of these notions for grammatical meaning, which he decomposed into semantic features (see Jakobson 1984).

Influenced by communication (information) theory and cybernetics, Jakobson explored more deeply the function of language for communication. He insisted, in particular, that all facets of the speech sound have a function (Jakobson and Waugh 1979): while distinctive features differentiate between words which are different in meaning, redundant features serve to support and enhance the distinctive features. Other features may show the boundaries of words (configurative), inform about the attitude of the speaker (emotive), or indicate the age, sex, and social class of the speaker (physiognomic).

Since distinctive and redundant features have no positive content, but all other types of signs in language do (including words and sentences), there are two types of signs in language; and language and the genetic code are the only systems to have this kind of structure. This differentiation led to a new dichotomy for language (see Jakobson and Waugh 1979, Jakobson 1980): mediacy (elements with an indirect relation to meaning, such as distinctive features) vs. immediacy (direct relation between sound and meaning: phenomena such as sound symbolism, synesthesia, glossolalia, and mythic, poetic, and magical uses of sound. In many cases of mediacy, there is an iconic (nonarbitrary) relation between sound and meaning (see also Jakobson 1966). This dichotomy is also related to the hemispheres of the brain (left vs. right, respectively) in Jakobson (1980).

All of the feature types together represent the entire makeup of a sound and there is nothing that is pure sound (Jakobson and Waugh 1979). Consequently, the oppositions traditionally made between linguistic and nonlinguistic, abstract and concrete, functional and nonfunctional, (phon)emic and (phon)etic are inappropriate.

4. Invariance And Relational Structure

Invariance was, for Jakobson, the dominant topic and methodological device underlying his research: any sign is defined by invariant properties, which differentiate it from the other elements in the system of which it is a part. Across languages too, he also insisted on the importance of universal invariants (language universals), establishing the equivalence of diverse signs. In addition, he correlated invariance with contextual variation: any sign evidences variation as it enters specific contexts. Contextual variants are not equal, but hierarchized: some are more basic, others more marginal. Invariance and variation apply to the signans (e.g., variation across phonemes) and the signatum (e.g., the semantic properties of the case and verbal systems of Russian (see Jakobson 1984). In semantics, by incorporating invariance (context-independent meaning, general meaning) and variation (context-specific meaning, polysemy, reference), he gave the basis for a rigorous semantics.

Invariance for Jakobson was always invariance in relationship (equivalence); and the primary type of relation in language is that of binary opposition, phonological (e.g., nasal vs. oral), grammatical (e.g., singular vs. plural), or lexical (e.g., near vs. far), etc. (see Jakobson 1971a, 1971b, 1987, Jakobson and Waugh 1979). Such binarism is based on an asymmetry in the relationship between a marked (focused or weighted) and an unmarked (neutral) term, for example, marked nasal, plural, near vs. unmarked oral, singular, far). For Jakobson, markedness is a fundamental way by which we organize not just language, but cultural systems in general.

5. Functions Of Language

For Jakobson, the raison d’etre for language is communication and language is suited to various communicative goals, which in turn are correlated with the act of communication in which language is used. In his famous article, Linguistics and Poetics, he defined the six primary factors of any speech event: (a) speaker, (b) addressee, (c) context (including the thing referred to), (d) message ( parole), (e) code (langue), and (f ) contact (medium) of communication. In conjunction with these, he then defined the functions of language in terms of a focus in the message on one of the factors: (a) emotive function (focus on the speaker), for example, intonation showing anger; (b) conative function (focus on the addressee), for example, imperatives and vocatives; (c) referential function (focus on the context), for example, talk about the real world; (d) poetic function (focus on the message), for example, poetry; (e) metalingual function (focus on the code), for example, definitions of words; and (f ) phatic function (focus on the contact), for example, ‘hello, do you hear me?’ These functions may be dominant in a message or may be subsidiary, for example, a referential message may carry expressive information about the opinion of the speaker.

6. Metaphor And Metonymy: Similarity Contiguity

In 1956, Jakobson published his famous Two Aspects of Language where he analyzed the relation between communicative processes and properties of linguistic structure. First, he distinguished the two fundamental operations: selection (substitution) for encoding (production) and combination for decoding (comprehension). Then, he contrasted two types of relations: similarity (all types of equivalence) and contiguity (temporal and spatial neighborhood), and said that they underlie the two operations. Put simply, the elements in a selection set are normally associated by similarity, and those in combination by contiguity. Since in aphasia, the normal patterning of speech is disturbed, Jakobson proposed that these factors be used as a way of categorizing types of aphasic disturbances.

For Jakobson similarity contiguity is a fundamental polarity of language, texts, culture, and human thought (cognition) in general. He used it for much of his work in semiotics of the cinema and music. He also used it to refine his definition of the poetic function (1960): in poetry, where focus on the message is dominant, equivalence (similarity) relations are used to build the combination rather than only to underpin the elements of the selection set. Thus, rhyme, alliteration, parallelisms, metaphor, etc. help to structure the poetic text, whereas in prose contiguity is the essential constructional principle.

7. Grammar

Jakobson also focused on the function of grammatical categories. His famous article on Shifters (1957) focuses on those elements whose general meaning in the code can only be specified by taking into account their use in messages, because the codal meaning includes information about particular elements of the speech event. For example, deictic pronouns designate speaker ( I ) and addressee (you). Thus, language encodes pragmatic factors of the context of utterance and linguistics necessarily includes syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Grammatical categories (both morphological and syntactic), for Jakobson, are defined as those which are obligatorily present in the construction of acceptable messages (1959a, 1959b), whereas particular lexical categories (e.g., words referring to space) are optional. Through this view of grammar, Jakobson provided a semantic and operational approach to the relation between language and cognition: grammatical categorizations provide the necessary patterns of thought.

Jakobson was also inspired by Charles Sanders Peirce’s notion that the essence of a sign is its interpretation, that is, its translation by some further sign. Henceforth, he defined the signatum as that which is interpretable or, better, translatable (Jakobson 1959b) by a potentially unlimited series of signs. He characterized the Peircian approach as the only sound basis for a strictly linguistic semantics.

8. Jakobson’s Legacy In Linguistics And Allied Disciplines

Jakobson’s influence on twentieth century thought was considerable and many of his contributions have become a permanent part of American and European views of language. He has had such a towering role in linguistics that his work has defined the field itself. Many of Jakobson’s concepts and discoveries are now so deeply ingrained in the theoretical basis of modern linguistics that they are thought to be commonplace or self-evident. This discussion will consider, in particular, his influence on linguistics in the last quarter-century and later offer some brief notes on other disciplines. (For more details of Jakobson’s influence, see Waugh and MonvilleBurston 1990.)

8.1 Influence On Linguistics

Jakobson’s view of language as a relational whole and a communicative tool with many functions opened the door to functionalist approaches more generally and abetted the development of linguistic studies that look at discourses and texts and consider their wider linguistic and ‘real-world’ environment. His work on Shifters showed that grammar, semantics, and pragmatics are but different sides of the same phenomenon and aided present-day interest in pragmatics. Work in pragmatics has led linguists to explore the boundaries of their discipline with the neighboring fields of anthropology, sociology, mythology, philology, and philosophy in a truly Jakobsonian interdisciplinary spirit. His writings on grammatical meaning have inspired thers to investigate the interdependence of invariance and variation, the semantics of case systems, and the interrelation of tense and aspect with syntax, discourse and the lexicon.

Jakobson’s insistence that language is a complex and dynamic whole with a variety of subcodes (speech styles) helped to pave the way for the advent of sociolinguistics. The ethnography of communication has also taken its inspiration from Jakobson’s multifunctional perspective on communication. His work on the functions of language and their relation to the speech (communication) act remains central in the investigation of speech in interaction. Anthropological linguists—who adopt a functional and pragmatic perspective with an interest in folklore, poetics (oral traditions), and discourse analysis—draw on and develop the ideas of the Prague School and of Jakobson in particular.

Jakobson stressed the need to search for general laws governing all linguistic systems and thus helped to foster the current interest in generalizations. He saw a definite equivalence between the search for explanatory adequacy in generative grammar and the elicitation and interpretation of the entire network aimed at by Praguian structuralism. His monograph on child language and aphasia, generally regarded as one of his most original and influential works, has been signaled as the point of departure of a new era in linguistics and has been lauded by many because it showed the relation between child language and phonology, launched psycho and neurolinguistics, and ushered in a new focus on universal and law-governed, general (explanatory) properties of language.

The widespread movement that presently investigates universal properties of language, both universal grammar and language universals, is deeply indebted to Jakobson. When the linguist Noam Chomsky came in contact with Jakobson and worked with Jakobson’s student and coauthor Morris Halle, he fully realized the explanatory power of universals and their relation to language acquisition: thereafter, he set out to determine universal constraints on the form of grammars. The other stream of research in universals, practiced by Joseph Greenberg and his associates, examines concrete materials from a great variety of languages in order to establish typological classifications and discover the general laws that underlie the structure of human language.

Many scholars agree with Jakobson that typology is important for the study of language change, areal linguistics, and historical reconstruction. His work in historical and geographical linguistics continues to be reprinted in readers in these areas. The seminal idea that changes must always be treated in view of the system that undergoes them is the essential premise for textbooks in historical linguistics. And Jakobson’s view of the teleological basis for language change has been instrumental in inspiring further work.

By revealing the close relationship between developmental studies and vital questions of linguistic theory, Jakobson’s Child Language also launched psycholinguistics. Many psycholinguists now recognize that the broad outlines of this bold synthesis continue to be confirmed. Following Jakobson’s example, scholars interested in language pathology have studied aphasia from a linguistic point of view and, for many, Jakobson’s distinction between similarity disorders and contiguity disorders is regarded as fundamental and firmly supported by contemporary ideas of the functional organization of the human brain. Jakobson was the first modern linguist to investigate in depth the concurrent constituents of linguistic elements. Many linguists have claimed that the distinctive feature was Jakobson’s greatest insight and, after the phoneme, the most significant step forward in modern phonology. Generative phonology recognizes Jakobson as one of its founding fathers, in particular through Halle. Markedness and the correlated notion of binary opposition are now widely used in linguistics and other disciplines. Componential analysis—analyzing an item into smaller properties and representing them as a combination—was generalized as a methodological model for semantics and lexical representation and has been adopted in other approaches as a means of describing the structure of a variety of semantic fields.

8.2 Influence On Other Fields

Jakobson’s influence on contemporary thought has also spread to disciplines such as literature, poetics, semiotics, social anthropology, mythology, and folklore. His theoretical papers Linguistics and Poetics and Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry and his analytical studies of poems by Baudelaire and Shakespeare established him as an important theoretician of literature. He is the source of not only structuralist but other contemporary trends in literary theory. He also helped to develop semiotics as a discipline in its own right and has been called the major catalyst in the contemporary semiotic reaction (see Jakobson 1973). And he is credited with introducing the American semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce to Americans and with showing them the importance of Peirce’s insights. His work in semiotics has also had repercussions in fields as diverse as economics, mathematics, especially catastrophe theory, sociology, and philosophy.

Jakobson’s influence on anthropology is considerable. In American anthropology, for example, three convergent Jakobsonian ideas have proven to be particularly fruitful: the structure of the poetic text, the closeness of ties between poetry and mythology, and the relationship between discourse and cultural context. His greatest impact, however, has been on structural anthropology, especially through Claude Levi-Strauss, who considers himself a disciple of Jakobson and has repeatedly acknowledged his indebtedness to him. He used many Jakobsonian ideas in his work on kinship systems, cooking, folk tales, myths, and primitive thought.

With the breadth and depth of his knowledge, his brilliant imagination, his prodigious output, the originality of his accomplishments, and his international influence on a variety of fields, Roman Jakobson has been recognized worldwide as one of the major creative minds of the twentieth century.

Bibliography:

1. Jakobson R 1941 Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze. Almqvist and Wiksells, Uppsalsa, Sweden [1968 Child Language, Aphasia, and Phonological Universals. Mouton, The Hague and Paris]
2. Jakobson R 1956 Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances. In: Jakobson R, Halle H (eds.) Fundamentals of Language. Mouton, The Hague
3. Jakobson R 1957 Shifters, verbal categories, and the Russian verb. In: Jakobson R (ed.) Selected Writings II: Word and Language. Mouton, The Hague, pp. 130–47
4. Jakobson R 1959a On linguistic aspects of translation. In: Brower R (ed.) On Translation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1966 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, New York)
5. Jakobson R 1959b Boas’ view of grammatical meaning. In: Goldschmidt W (ed.) The Anthropology of Franz Boas. Essays on the Centennial of His Birth.
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