Jakobson - Linguistics And Poetics

Extract from

Roman Jakobson Closing statement: Linguistics and Poetics
In Semiotics: An Introductory Reader (Hutchinson, 1985) Pp. 150-156 Language must be investigated in all the variety of its functions. Before discussing the poetic function we must define its place among the other functions of language. An outline of these functions demands a concise survey of the constitutive factors inany speech event, in any act of verbal communication. The ADDRESSER sends a MESSAGE to the ADDRESSEE. To be operative the message requires a CONTEXT referred to ("referent" in another, somewhat ambiguous, nomenclature), seizable by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a CODE fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and addressee (or in other words, to theencoder and decoder of the message); 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. All these factors inalienably involved in verbal communication may be schematized as follows: CONTEXT ADDRESSER………… .......... … MESSAGE………………..ADDRESSEE CONTACT CODE Each of these six factorsdetermines a different function of language. Although we distinguish six basic aspects of language, we could, however, hardly find verbal messages that would fulfill only one function. The diversity lies not in a monopoly of some one of these several functions but in a different hierarchical order of functions. The verbal

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structure of a message depends primarily on the predominantfunction. But even though a set (Einstellung) toward the referent, an orientation toward the CONTEXT - briefly the so-called REFERENTIAL, "denotative," "cognitive" function - is the leading task of numerous messages, the accessory participation of the other functions in such messages must be taken into account by the observant linguist. The so-called EMOTIVE or "expressive" function, focused on theADDRESSER, aims a direct expression of the speaker's attitude toward what he is speaking about. It tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion whether true or feigned; therefore, the term "emotive" launched and advocated by Marty [ ] has proved to be preferable to "emotional." The purely emotive stratum in language is presented by the interjections. They differ from the means of referentiallanguage both by their sound pattern (peculiar sound sequences or even sounds elsewhere unusual) and by their syntactic role (they are not components but equivalents of sentences). "Tut! Tut! said McGinty": the complete utterance of Conan Doyle's character consists of two suction clicks. The emotive function, laid bare in the interjections, flavors to some extent all our utterances, on their phonic,grammatical, and lexical level. If we analyze language from the standpoint of the information it carries, we cannot restrict the notion of information to the cognitive aspect of language. A man, using expressive features to indicate his angry or ironic attitude, conveys ostensible information, and evidently this verbal behavior cannot be likened to such nonsemiotic, nutritive activities as "eatinggrapefruit" (despite Chatman's bold simile). The difference between [big] and the emphatic prolongation of the vowel [bi:g] is a conventional, coded linguistic feature like the difference between the short and long vowel in such Czech pairs as [vi] 'you' and (vi:] 'knows,' but in the latter pair the differential information is phonemic and in the former emotive. As long as we are interested inphonemic invariants, the English /i/ and /i:/ appear to be mere variants of one and the same phoneme, but if we are concerned with emotive units, the relation between the invariant and variants is reversed: length and shortness are invariants implemented by variable phonemes. Saporta's surmise that emotive difference is a nonlinguistic feature, "attributable to the delivery of the message and not...