ROMAN JAKOBSON: BIOGRAPHY, COMMUNICATION MODEL AND CONTRIBUTIONS - ARTE - 2025

Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) was a Russian thinker who stood out for his contributions in the area of ​​linguistics, coming to be considered one of the most relevant linguists of the 20th century. He was a precursor in creating an analysis of the structure of both language, poetry and art.

Its influence in the area of ​​the humanities occurred in the 20th century. His most important contributions began thanks to the fact that he was part of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, where he was one of the founding members.

Source:], via Wikimedia Commons. The Moscow Linguistic Circle was one of the two associations that caused the development of Russian formalism. This style had great influence in the area of ​​literary criticism.

Jakobson lived in Prague, where he played an important role in the creation of the Linguistic Circle in that city. There he was also a great influence for the current of structuralism to grow.

His most important role was fulfilled when he created a communication model that served as a theory of language communication. This theory was based especially on delimiting the existing functions in language.

Biography

Early years

His full name was Roman Osipovich Jakobson. The Russian linguist was born on October 11, 1896, the product of the union between Osip and Anna Jakobson.

Osip, Roman's father, was a chemist and frequented different groups of intellectuals. His parents placed great importance on the education of their son, who in his early years learned to speak Russian and French.

He became fluent in six languages: Russian, French, Polish, German, Czech and English. She even had basic knowledge to defend herself using Norwegian and Finnish, languages that she even used to teach some classes. She became proficient in reading other languages, especially when it came to academic documents.

Poetry and literature were very present in his life from an early age. Her parents arranged for her to attend various poetry recitals, influencing her literary works to initially deal with futurist-style poems.

Jakobson achieved his academic degree in Moscow, at the Lazarev Institute for Oriental Languages. He then opted for a master's degree at Moscow University and finally obtained a doctorate at the University of Prague.

During the 20s of the 20th century, Roman Jakobson served as a professor at the University of Moscow, where he taught some Slavic classes. He was also in charge of some classrooms at the Moscow School of Dramatic Art.

His lectures were very popular with the pupils and students of the time.

Prague

Already at the end of the 20s of the 20th century, Roman Jakobson had to move to Prague due to the political events of the time. The Russian linguist chose the Czech capital as a new place of residence because it had a University in which there was an area that was dedicated to language studies.

It was in Prague that he began to deepen his analysis of structuralism. He was a professor of philology during the 1930s. In the city of Brno he made several speeches in which he demonstrated against the Nazis.

This position forced him to also leave Czechoslovakia when the Germans came to invade that nation. To do this, he had to return to Prague from Brno and settle there for three weeks until he was able to flee to Denmark thanks to the help of some acquaintances. Later he settled in Oslo (Norway).

U.S

The Germans also came to invade Norway in the 1940s. This forced Roman Jakobson to keep changing his place of residence. First he went to Sweden and from there he changed his residence to the United States. In the American continent, he achieved a teaching position at Columbia University.

In the United States, it enjoyed the same approval it had in Europe. Scholars flocked to him for his knowledge of the Slavic peoples, but also for his theories on structuralism.

By 1949, Harvard University requested his services as they had expanded the Slavic department. Some students followed him in his move and also changed universities in order to continue acquiring their knowledge. At Cambridge he was appointed as professor of Slavic languages ​​and literature.

His physical appearance was highlighted by his disheveled hair and he had a reputation for being messy. His office was known for the large number of papers that adorned his desk, as well as the books that were scattered throughout his room.

Jakobson worked at Harvard until 1967, when he was appointed Professor Emeritus. From that moment he was in charge of giving talks and conferences in different institutions. He had the honor of being able to speak at Yale, Princeton or Brown.

He died at the age of 85 at the Massachusetts General Hospital, located in the city of Boston.

Communication model

In this communicational model, there is a sender who was in charge of transmitting the message, a receiver, who is the recipient, and a message, which is what is transmitted. In order for this message to be transmitted, there must also be a linguistic code and a channel.

Roman Jakobson's communication model consisted of defining six different functions that it fulfills in language, also known as functions of the communicative process. These functions that Jakobson defined are those that according to him allowed to develop an effective act of verbal communication.

The referential function

The first function Jakobson refers to is the referential one. This function has to do with the context that surrounded the process. Here a situation, object or state of mind was described.

The descriptions that were used during the referential function were defined details and deictic words, which were those terms that could not be understood without the remaining information.

The poetic function

This part of the communication process had to do with the message and its form according to Jakobson. This term was used mainly in the area of ​​literature. Here we found resources such as rhyme or alliteration (repetition of some sounds).

For Jakobson, poetry successfully brought together the form and function of the communicative process.

The emotional function

Rather, it had to do with the person in charge of sending the message, who best fulfilled the communication process when he made use of interjections and changes of sounds. These elements did not change the denotative meaning of an expression. It served to give more information about the internal aspect of the speaker or sender of the message.

The conative function

This aspect had to do more directly with the recipient or recipient of the message. Jakobson referred to this function because it had to do with the use of vocatives and imperatives. The sender of the message expected to receive a response from the receiver of the message. This response could also be through actions.

The phatic function

This function was observed mainly in greetings, in informal conversations that had to do with the weather, especially when the sender and the receiver were strangers or did not know each other.

This function also gave elements that served to open, maintain, verify or conclude the communication process.

The metalingual function

It was also known as a metalinguistic or reflexive function. For Jakobson it had to do with the use of language, or what is also defined by Jakobson as code. The use of language served to discuss or describe.

In Jakobson's communicative model, at least one of the six functions was the dominant element in a text or in the communication process. In the case of poetry, for example, the dominant function used to be poetics.

The first time that Jakobson published on these studies of the communicative model was in the Closing Statements: Linguistics and Poetics.

critics

This model proposed by Jakobson also had some detractors. The main reason for the criticism of the six functions proposed by the Russian linguist is that he showed no interest in the play factor.

Even, according to the French linguist Georges Mounin, this was an element that was not taken into account by researchers in the linguistic area.

Other contributions

The ideas that Jakobson presented in relation to linguistics remained in force until today, with an important role in the area of ​​language. Typology, markup, and linguistic universals are ideas that were linked together.

The typology had to do with the classification made of the languages ​​in relation to the characteristics they share at the grammatical level. For its part, the marking had to do with the analysis that was made of the way in which the grammar was organized.

Finally, Jakobson spoke about linguistic universals, which referred to the analysis of the characteristics of the different languages ​​used in the world.

Jakobson's ideas and studies had a great influence on Friedemann Schulz von Thun's four-sided model. It also played an important role in Michael Silverstein's ideas of pragmatic goal.

Jakobson's influence extended to the ethnopoetic and communication ethnography studies proposed by Dell Hymes. Even in Jacques Lacan's model of psychoanalysis and in Giorgio Agamben's philosophy.

He was the author of more than 600 articles throughout his life.

References

1. Blackwell, W. (2016). The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (4th ed.). West Sussex: International communication association.
2. Bradford, R. (1995). Roman Jakobson. London: Routledge.
3. Broekman, J. (1974). Structuralism. Dordrecht, Boston: D. Reidel.
4. Enos, T. (1996). Encyclopedia of rhetoric and composition. New York: Routledge.
5. Roudinesco, E. (1986). Jacques Lacan & Co: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.