Handbook of Semiotics

Jakobson

]akobson Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) was one of the most influential linguists of this century. Although few of his writings deal with explicitly semiotic topics, Jakobson today counts as one of the "classics of semiotics" (Krampen et a!., eds. 1981). Jakobson's contributions to semiotics and the theoretical principles of his reFig . ] 1. Portrait of Roman ]akobson (18961982 ) (Source: Koch 1986a: 131). 74 • JAKOBSON search are discussed in many sections of this handbook and can be summarized only briefly in this chapter. 1. Universality ofJakobson's Scholarship Although Jakobson modestly preferred to characterize his work as that of a "Russian linguist" (Russkij filolog; cf. Jakobson et a!. 1984: 21), the scope of his scholarship is truly universal. 1.1 Survey of]akobson's Work A personal bibliography of some one thousand titles (d. Jakobson 1971, Koch 1981: 232) testifies to the extreme productivity ofJakobson's genius. The eight-volume edition of his main works Oakobson 1966-88) is so far only a collection of Selected Writings. Major writings of semiotic interest published elsewhere include Jakobson (1973a; b; 1975; 1976; 1985). Studies on Jakobson and echoes of his scholarship are Holenstein (1975), Waugh (1976), Armstrong &: Schooneveld, eds. (1977), Eco (1977a), Krampen (1981), Schnelle, ed. (1981), Sangster (1982), Halle et a!. (1983), Koch (1986a), and Pomorska et aI., eds. (1987). 1.2 Epochs of]akobson's Research Jakobson's teaching has deeply influenced several trends in the evolution of twentieth-century structuralism and linguistics. Koch distinguishes four epochs in the development of his research (1981: 225-26): 1. In his formalist period, from 1914 to 1920, Jakobson was both the founder of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and a member of the influential Opoyaz poetics group (see Russian Formalism 1.). 2. In his structuralist period, from 1920 to 1939, Jakobson was a dominating figure of the Prague School of Linguistics and Aesthetics. 3. In his semiotic period, from 1939 to 1949, Jakobson was associated with the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle (Br0ndal, Hjelmslev) and was active in the founding of the Linguistic Circle of New York. 4. Jakobson's interdisciplinary period began in 1949 with his teaching at Harvard (later also at MIT). Information and communication theory , mathematics (cf. Holenstein 1975), neurolinguistics, biology (cf. Code 5.1), and even physics Oakobson 1982) were among the fields to which J akobson extended his interests. 2. Jakobson as a Semiotician According to Eco, the linguist Jakobson "was semiotically biased from his early years: he could not focus on the laws oflanguage without considering the whole of their behavioral background " (1977a: 43). The semiotic substratum of Jakobson's work appears in his topics of research , in his view of linguistics as part of semiotics , and in the basic tenets of his dynamic structuralism. 2.1 ]akobson's Semiotic Field The central fields of Jakobson's research were poetics (see also Literature 1.3) and linguistics, especially phonology, morphology, dialectology , and aphasiology. But from his early years, Jakobson's interest went beyond language and the verbal arts to cover the larger semiotic fields of culture and aesthetics. Jakobson contributed to 'applied semiotics with papers on music (q.v. 3.1-2), painting, film, theater, and folklore, and to fundamental issues of semiotics such as the concepts of sign (cf. Waugh 1976: 38-53), system (q.v. 2.4), code (q.v. 5.1), structure, function (q.v. 3.2), communication , and the history of semiotics. Moreover, he was one of the first scholars to discover the relevance of Peirce's semiotics to linguistics (cf. Jakobson 1965; 1980: 31-38). In particular through his influence on Levi-Strauss, Jakobson 's semiotic principles became highly influential to the development of structuralism. For Jakobson's influence in text semiotics, see also Culler (1975: 55-74) and Hawkes (1977: 76-87). 2.2 Semiotic Systems and Language Jakobson determined the scope of semiotics in relation to linguistics as follows: The subject matter of semiotic is the communication of any messages whatever, whereas the field of linguistics is confined to the communication of verbal messages. Hence, of these two sciences of man, the latter has a narrower scope, yet, on the other hand, any human communication of nonverbal messages presupposes a circuit of verbal messages, without a reverse implication. (1973a: 32) Based on the relationship to spoken language, Jakobson distinguished three types of sign systems (1973a: 28-31): (1) language substitutes, including writing, drum and whistled languages, and the Morse code (which is a case of second-order substitution , secondary to writing); (2) language...