Jacobson linguistics and poetics summary. Biography. Institute of Philology and Intercultural Communication

Russian linguist, whose ideas influenced other sciences: literary criticism, anthropology, neurology, the history of Russian culture. Born October 11, 1896 in Moscow. As a student at Moscow University, he founded the Moscow Linguistic Circle. In 1920 he was one of the organizers of the Prague Linguistic Circle. Forced to emigrate in 1939, he lectured in Copenhagen, Oslo and Uppsala; in 1941 he moved to the USA. From 1949 to 1967 he taught at Harvard University. Until the end of his life he worked in Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The first significant work of Yakobson was the study of the peculiarities of the language of the futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov (1919). Contrasting poetic language with natural language, Jacobson proclaimed that "poetry is language in an aesthetic function" and therefore "is indifferent to the object it describes." This thesis formed the basis of the aesthetics of early Russian formalism, which overturned the traditional relationship between form and content in literary work. In a later article (1928), co-authored with Yu.N. Tynyanov, it is said that although literary criticism operates with its own internal laws, these laws must be correlated with other areas of culture - politics, economics, religion and philosophy.

In a study comparing the Russian and Czech systems of versification (1923), Yakobson focuses on the sound segments of words called phonemes, which do not have their own meaning, but their sequences are the most important means of expressing meanings in the language. Interest in the sound side of the language led Yakobson to create (with the participation of N.S. Trubetskoy) a new branch of linguistics - phonology, the subject of which is the differential features of the sounds that make up phonemes. Jakobson established 12 binary acoustic features that make up phonological oppositions, which, according to him, are linguistic universals that underlie any language. Method structural analysis in terms of binary oppositions, he had a great influence on the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss; its application by Levi-Strauss in the analysis of myth marked the beginning of French structuralism.

The foundations of another new direction in science - neurolinguistics - are laid in Jacobson's work on aphasia (1941), in which he connects speech disorders with neurological data on the structure of the brain. This study provided a physiological justification for his doctrine of metaphor (the axis of combination) and metonymy (the axis of selection) as two main opposed to each other ways of ordering language units, which also determine the difference between poetry and prose. This opposition soon became an integral part of the terminological apparatus of modern literary criticism.

Literary criticism was also in the sphere of Jacobson's interests. He owns a monumental study of Slavic epic poetry. Works on Russian and Czech literature show the work of Pushkin, Pasternak, Mayakovsky and other writers from a new angle, as well as such literary trends like futurism and symbolism. Many of Jacobson's works recent years devoted to the "grammar of poetry", i.e. functioning of grammatical categories in poetic works. Jacobson was one of the founders of communication theory. Jacobson died in Boston on July 18, 1982.

Roman Osipovich Yakobson

JAKOBSON Roman (1896-1982) - Russian linguist, semiotician, literary critic, who contributed to the establishment of a productive dialogue between European and American cultural traditions, French, Czech and Russian structuralism, between linguistics and anthropology, between linguistics and psychoanalysis. Ya.'s professional career began with the Moscow Linguistic Circle, and later, together with Petrograd friends, he founded the OPOYAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language).

Once in exile in the Czech Republic, J. takes part in the activities of the Prague Linguistic Circle. Forced to flee from the Czech Republic occupied by the Nazis, J. spends the next period in Denmark and Norway, where in discussions he comprehends the differences between Prague structuralism and Danish glossematics. During the war, J. is in America, where he holds the position of professor of Slavic languages and literature at Harvard University. The complete works of J. in five volumes were published in The Hague (1962-1979). I was deeply occupied with the problem of the inseparable connection between linguistics and poetics. He was one of the first to popularize Peirce's ideas and apply his trichotomous classification of signs, and made a significant contribution to the theory of communication. The main object of research Ya. - this is not the Saussurian static and abstract "language" as a system of rules established by society, but "speech activity", "language-in-action" ("speech event", to use Bakhtin's expression, or "acts of speech communication").

Over time, I. gradually moved from the study of purely formal aspects of the language to the study of the semantics of the work as such. For Y., the meaning of a work is determined not only by the structure of the sign-conductor, the meaning (as Levi-Strauss showed at one time, with whom Y. had friendly relations and joint scientific interests) is also the result of comprehension, internalization, inclusion in the text of the formally ordered structure of the universe. In his works on poetics Ya. refers to the study of the poetry of the Russian avant-garde. The "self-styled word" of the avant-gardists, annulling the object depicted or denoted by it, raised the question of the nature and significance of the elements that have a semantic function in spatial figures and in language. It was the new attitude to the word that made it possible to identify and analyze literaryness as such (what makes a work a literary work). Ya. believed that his inherent adult interest in the acoustic, onomatopoeic experiences of the avant-garde was the result of his childhood interest in spells, witchcraft speeches, "abstruse" conspiracies (at the same time, he was also interested in the sound side of folk sayings, and their meaning, and sometimes "nonsense ", also having their own laws of construction). Thus, the path to the study of the Russian avant-garde was blazed by Y. through the study of the poetics of Russian folklore (Y. himself wrote "abstruse" poems under the pseudonym "Alyagrov").

According to some modern theorists (for example, Kristeva), one cannot deny certain merits of J. in structural linguistics in general, in phonology, in epistemology and the history of linguistic discourse, but "his theory of poetic language still remains in the first place." Ya., defending his view of avant-garde poetry, sharply opposed those who interpreted the formalist approach to art too simplistic - against those who believed that formalism could not catch the connection of art with real life, that he called for the approach "art for the sake of art", following in the footsteps of Kantian aesthetics. Ya. noted that "neither Tynyanov, nor Mukarzhovsky, nor Shklovsky, nor I, none of us ever proclaimed the self-sufficiency of art. If we tried to show something, it was that art is an integral part of the social structure, a component which interacts with everyone else and is itself changeable, since both the sphere of art and its relationship with other elements of the social structure are in constant motion. We do not stand for the separatism of art, but for the autonomy of the aesthetic function. "

The merits of J. should also include the fact that thanks to his research on the avant-garde (not only poetry, but also Futurism, Dadaism and Expressionism), it became obvious that the object of semiotics is not only verbal language, but also art, which for a long time eluded semiotic analysis . All arts, whether they are essentially temporal, like music and poetry, are based, according to Ya., on spatial relationships, like painting and sculpture; or syncretic, spatial-temporal, like theater or circus performances and film screenings - they are all associated with the sign. Talking about the "grammar" of art is not just about using a meaningless metaphor: the point is that all kinds of art have in mind the organization of polar significative categories, which in turn are based on the opposition of marked and unmarked elements. All kinds of art, united, form a network of artistic conventions. The originality of a work is limited by the artistic code that dominates in a given era and in a given society. And even the artist's disobedience to the requested rules, no less than his faithful adherence to them, is perceived by contemporaries in line with the established code, which the innovative artist is trying to destroy.

The apotheosis of Y.'s interdisciplinary thinking falls on the 1940s and 1950s - the scope of his research is linguistics, poetics, rhetoric, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and the philosophy of language. Analyzing the phenomenon of language in all its manifestations, Ya. was sure that it is impossible to isolate it from the whole integrity of human behavior, which is always significant - hence his deep interest in anthropological research. First, according to Ya., any linguistic innovation can work only when it is accepted and integrated by the society; secondly, language is not the only semiotic system in culture, and it has in common with other sign systems a commonality of laws that govern their functioning and development. Although there are sign systems, the mechanism of functioning of which is not identical to language (cinema, music), nevertheless, signification, that is, meaning, is a phenomenon that covers the entire cultural universe, therefore, the task of semiotics is to explore their interdisciplinary relationships. and identify permanent and universal mechanisms of signification. Language and culture are very closely interconnected, and therefore J. in 1970 states that linguistics is inseparable from cultural anthropology. In collaboration with Levi-Strauss ("Cats" Baudelaire) J. indicates that both linguistic and anthropological analysis of the poetic text are complementary and allow you to see more deeply how this text is made and how it functions.

In a poetic work, the linguist discovers structures similar to the structures that the anthropologist reveals. For his part, the ethnologist recognizes that myths are not only some conceptual orderings, they are also a kind of poetic texts that evoke truly aesthetic emotions in their listeners and readers. The corresponding methods of analysis, from the point of view of Ya., are the method of binary opposition, the identification of symmetry and asymmetry, the identification of formal structures that crystallize the meaning of the work. I. believed that a number of disciplines, such as semiotics, anthropology, ethnology, should be united within the theory of communication, which studies all types of exchanges in human society (ethnology studies exchange as a basic social fact (Moss); the exchange of women, property and information (Levi-Strauss); semiotics - exchanges through signs; linguistics - exchanges of verbal messages in natural language). It is with the name Ya that some of the key ideas of modern communication theory are associated, and above all, the model of the communicative act developed and improved by him in relation to verbal language (Linguistics and Poetics, 1960).

It should be noted that in the future, the model of I. was repeatedly criticized from various sides, because it offered some kind of abstract-ideal model of communication that does not reflect the real complexity of the communication process. Ya. proceeded from the fact that the goal of any communication is the adequacy of communication, based on the understanding of the message, therefore, its scheme is based on an abstraction that implies not only the use of the same code, but also the same amount of memory of the transmitting and receiving, the same same context of perception (social, cultural, intertextual, ideological). The ideal of such communication, as Lotman later showed, is commands, orders, it is not even auto-communication (“to say I is to make a mistake” - in psychoanalysis, auto-communication is doubtful, because it cannot be about identity, the identity of the person himself). So, in reality, the decoding process is not so simple - both participants in the communication use a complex set of codes and subcodes.

Any real interpretation will be more or less inadequate - on which, in fact, Peirce's idea of \u200b\u200bunlimited semiosis was based. I. identifies the following basic elements of the act of communication - the sender, context (also "referent" - what the meaning of the message is addressed to), message, channel (contact - something that acts both as a physical channel and as a psychological connection between the addressee and the addresser , which determine the ability to establish and maintain communication), code, message and addressee (recipient). According to the model of communication, I. identifies and analyzes several basic functions of the language corresponding to various aspects of the communicative process, and it is assumed that these ideas will be relevant to any type of message (a literary work, an architectural monument, a picture). According to the idea of Ya., each of the six elements, factors of speech communication corresponds to a special function of the language. By "language function" Ya. means the orientation, "setting or assignment (role) of the message itself in relation to other factors of verbal communication. If the purpose of the message is the addressee, then we are dealing with a phatic function; if the message is directed to the context - speech is about the referential function, etc. For the language itself, the poetic function of language (which dominates in poetry and in art in general) is of particular interest. , but it is hardly possible to find voice messages that perform only this one function.

Accordingly, linguistics and semiotics should study language in all the variety of its functions, especially since the differences between messages are not in the monopoly manifestation of one function, but in their different hierarchy. The hierarchy of functions in a message determines the specifics of each specific act of communication - the process of transmission and perception of a message. Ya distinguishes the following functions: emotive (expressive), conative (=appelative), phatic, referent (communicative), metalinguistic, poetic.

1) The emotive function is focused on the addresser and has as its goal a direct expression of the speaker to what he is talking about. "It is associated with the desire to impress certain emotions in the recipient" - whether it is a question of genuine or feigned feelings. The purely emotive layer of the language is represented by interjections. This function colors all statements in a certain tone. Compared to referential language, emotive language, which primarily performs an expressive function, is usually closer to poetic language (which is aimed specifically at the sign as such). The transmitted information in most cases is not some kind of objectified knowledge - that is, it is not limited to a purely cognitive (cognitive) aspect. When a person uses expressive elements to express anger, irony or joy, he unconditionally conveys information - about himself, this is subjective information. (To illustrate his thought, Ya. used an example from the theatrical practice of Stanislavsky. At an audition at the Moscow Art Theater, the director suggested that the actors make 40 different messages out of the words "tonight", changing their expressive coloring. The audience had to understand what kind of situation they were talking about only according to the sound image of these two words.) Thus, it is clear that the emotive elements of the message are subject to semiotic analysis.

2) The conative (appelative, or assimilation) function is focused on the addressee. It finds its grammatical expression in the vocative form and the imperative mood. These message elements cannot be true or false.

3) In the traditional model of language (by Buhler, for example), only these two and one more function were distinguished, namely, the referential, or communicative, that is, the main function of the message, correlated with the subject in question. This function is tied to the relationship of the message to the referent or context. In the "Theses of the Prague Linguistic Circle" only two functions were described - communication and poetic. Martinet singled out three functions - communicative, expressive, aesthetic. Ya. adds three more functions, which in the previous classifications were, as it were, varieties of communicative.

4) There are messages, the main purpose of which is to establish, continue or interrupt communication, to check whether the channel is working (whether contact has been established with the recipient). This focus on contact is expressed in a phatic function and is carried out through the exchange of rhetorical formulations or even entire dialogues, the only function of which is to maintain communication. The phatic function of language is the only function that birds and humans have in common, since the desire to start and maintain communication is also characteristic of talking birds. In addition, this function of language is acquired before all other functions by young children, since the desire to enter into communication appears much earlier than the ability to transmit or receive informative messages.

5) The metalinguistic function (or the function of interpretation) pursues the goal of establishing the identity of the statement. A distinction must be made between two levels of language: the "object language" spoken about the external world, and the "metalanguage" spoken about the language itself. Metalanguage plays a very important role not only for linguists and for science in general, but also in our everyday language. We use a metalanguage without being aware of the metalinguistic nature of our operations (for example, "Do you speak Russian?" or "Do you understand what I'm talking about").

6) The poetic function of language is concentration, focusing attention on the message for its own sake (and not for the sake of a referent, contact or addressee). This is the most important function in a poetic message (a work of art), although in all other types of speech activity it acts as a secondary, additional component. I. believed that each speech act in a sense stylizes and transforms the event he describes. The way in which he does this is determined by his intention, the emotional content and audience to which he is addressed, the preliminary "censorship" he goes through, the set of ready-made samples to which he belongs. Since the "poetry" of the speech act shows very well that communication is not of primary importance here, the "censorship" can be weakened, muffled. Does the poetic function of language cancel the referential function (that is, can they be considered mutually negating) and how can we even identify the poetic function in any message?

V. Mayakovsky said that "any adjective used in poetry is thus already a poetic epithet." I. believed that "poetry is not just the addition of speech with rhetorical embellishments, but a general reassessment of speech and all its components." At the same time, he cites as an example an anecdote in which a missionary reproaches his flock in one of the African tribes for walking around naked. “But what about you yourself?” they answered, pointing to his face. “Aren’t you yourself naked in some places?” “Yes, but this is the same face.” “But we have a face everywhere,” the natives answered. conclusion J. adds: "So in poetry, any speech element turns into a figure of poetic speech. " It is curious that even within poetry the hierarchy of the above functions can be discerned - for example, epic poetry, focusing on the third person, relies more on the referential function, lyric poetry - on expressive, etc.

On the other hand, in other, non-poetic texts, sometimes the communicative function is parallel in importance to the poetic one - in modern advertising, in medieval legislation, in Sanskrit scientific treatises written in verse (which in the Indian poetic tradition are different from poetry proper) - this is so called by Y. "applied poetry", which are not known to all cultures. I. believed that the poetic function is inherent in the speech of any human being with early childhood and plays a leading role in the construction of discourse. So, the proverb (the passion for collecting which manifested itself in Y. from the very moment he learned to read) belongs both to everyday speech and to verbal art. We give here a brief analysis of Y. one Russian proverb. "You can perfectly know the syntactic and morphological rules of the Russian language, as well as its dictionary, and yet be puzzled by the sentence - Seven arrived on one wheel - unless, of course, the listener knows in advance the meaning of the proverb - "Empty curiosity must remain unsatisfied ". The identity of the first and last syllable -se- in the given sequence (Seven ... wheel), as well as the correspondence between both stressed two-syllable groups at the end of the two initial words (seven ... arrived) and the pre-stressed two-syllable groups of the last two units (on one wheel) turns this four-word group into a symmetrical dichotomous formation of two binary parts.Thus, a proverb is the largest coded unit that occurs in speech and at the same time the shortest poetic composition.The relativity of the construction of a proverb is succinctly expressed in the saying: A stump is not a suburb , one speech is not a proverb. This function, by enhancing the tangibility of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy between signs and objects. It once again demonstrates that the sign does not coincide with the object. ("The poetic function presupposes an introverted (=autoreflexive) relation to verbal signs as a unity of signifier and signified").

Poetry was defined by the I as "an utterance with an attitude towards expression", poetry "is a language in its aesthetic function", it is indifferent in relation to the subject of the utterance (just as objective prose is indifferent in relation to rhythm). How does poetry manifest itself? "The poetic is present when a word is felt as a word, and not only as a representation of the object it calls, or as an outburst of emotion, when words and their composition, their meaning, their external and internal form, acquire weight and value in themselves instead of being treated indifferently. to reality." Poetics as a field of knowledge, according to Ya., deals precisely with the poetic function of language [its competence in relation to poetry includes the study of rhyme, rhythm, parallelism (repetition), alliteration, assonance, size]. We can say that poetics is "a linguistic study of the poetic function of verbal messages in general and poetry in particular", or a science that studies poetic works through the prism of language. It is interesting that linguists who have taken up the study of poetic language sometimes meet with resistance from literary critics, because, as they believe, linguistics in best case serves poetry. However, literary scholars are hardly right when they consider that "the semantic study of a poetic statement is not within the competence of linguistics." If the poem raises questions that go beyond its verbal texture, then we fall into the scope of semiotics (a science broader than linguistics, according to Ya.).

Today, the meaning of Y. is not limited to linguistics and poetics, more and more often his name is mentioned in connection with the development of psychoanalysis, in particular, we are talking about the influence of Y. on the teachings of Lacan. How is the famous structuralist formula "the unconscious is language" related to the concept of the Self? In his desire to explicate the universal essence of the language, Ya discovered that the boundaries separating from each other poetic speech, the speech of the psychotic and the child, are not as distinct as it was commonly believed. The semiosis of a language is a transcendental sphere, and in order to get into it, each of the languages is subjected to the assimilation of a common structural model. There is a structure - already, everywhere and always, where there is language and speech. Therefore, the lines between poetry, the stream of consciousness and the unconscious are so elusive. A poem differs from any other message only in that it uses the segments of the structure in a different way than it does in the utterance of an aphasic or in the babbling of a child. Hence one step to the idea of the structural nature of the unconscious. The structural principle unites the object and the word that names it. This is most clearly seen when the language loses its referential function - that is, ceases to be a means of transmitting information about the outside world in our everyday practice, when it appears in poetic and metalinguistic functions, or, as Ya shows, when some language dysfunctions are revealed - for example, in the case of aphasic disorders. With aphasic disorders, the patient's speech, in which the impossibility of articulating and perceiving certain linguistic moments, reveals precisely the intrastructural violation, and thus the functional, teleological nature of the elements of language. These segments of meaning can be called unconscious and, following Lacan, say that "the unconscious is organized like a language", and therefore refuse to separate the unconscious into extra-linguistic or proto-linguistic areas, and thereby abandon the vulgar opposition "consciousness" - "unconscious".

The problems of aphasia (and children's speech) interested Ya as early as the 1930s as problems of the structural laws that govern the formation and disintegration of speech. He proceeded from the fact that if aphasia is considered a speech disorder, then any description and classification of aphasia syndromes should begin with the question of which aspects of the language are damaged in various disorders of this kind. The study of this problem is necessary for both linguists and neurophysiologists and psychoanalysts (who deal with speech). Aphatic regression can serve as a mirror of the process of assimilation of speech sounds by a child: it reflects the development of speech skills in a child, but in the opposite direction. Moreover, a comparison of the language of children and aphasic patients makes it possible to establish a number of laws about the interdependence of these two processes. Types of aphasia are numerous and different, but they all remain within the two types described by Ya - a violation of the relationship of similarity and contiguity. Any form of aphasic disorder consists in a more or less severe impairment of the capacity for selection and substitution, or combination and contextual composition. The first type of speech activity causes an inability to perform metalinguistic operations, while the second one destroys the ability to maintain the hierarchy of linguistic units. The aphatic of the first type excludes relations of similarity from speech, while the aphatic of the second type excludes relations of contiguity. Metaphor is a foreign element when the relationship of similarity is violated, but when the relation of contiguity is violated, metonymy disappears from the proposition. Discourse can develop along two different semantic lines: one topic can lead to another topic through similarity or through contiguity. According to how patients look for ways of the most relevant expression through metaphor or through metonymy, the first way of forming a proposition is called metaphorical, and the second - metonymic. Aphasia limits or completely blocks one or another of these two processes - that is why the study of aphasia, according to Ya., is of great importance for linguists. In normal speech activity, both of these processes work flawlessly, but a closer look reveals that under the influence of a cultural model, certain personality traits, or a particular manner of speaking, either one or the other of these two processes takes advantage. All the more interesting is the fact that the interaction of these two elements in artistic creativity is especially clearly expressed.

A.R. Usmanov

The latest philosophical dictionary. Comp. Gritsanov A.A. Minsk, 1998.

(1982-07-18 ) (85 years old)

Biography

Moscow

Roman Yakobson was born in Moscow, one of three sons in a Jewish family of a chemical engineer and merchant of the 1st guild, a graduate of the Riga Polytechnic Joseph (Osip) Abramovich Yakobson (originally from Austria-Hungary) and his wife Anna Yakovlevna Yakobson, nee Volpert (native of Riga) . In 1914 he graduated from the gymnasium at and entered the Department of Slavic Philology of the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1918. In 1915 he became one of the founders of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and remained its chairman until 1920. In 1918-1920 he worked at Moscow University.

One of the closest friends of R. O. Yakobson was Mayakovsky, who introduced him to the work of Khlebnikov and highly appreciated his article about this poet. Mayakovsky mentions Jacobson in the poem "To Comrade Netta" and the essay "I Traveled Like This". In turn, Yakobson wrote an article on Mayakovsky's death, "About the generation that squandered its poets."

Czechoslovakia

In 1926 he became one of the founders of the Prague Linguistic Circle, and served as its vice president. Then he became an intermediary between the Czechoslovak and Soviet governments when the latter forced Prague to immediately recognize the USSR under the threat of sanctions.

In 1930 he defended his doctoral dissertation at the German University in Prague (topic: Uber den Versbau der serbokroatischen Volksepen). In 1931 he moved to Brno, taught Russian philology and ancient Czech literature at the Masaryk University - in 1933-1934 an assistant, in 1934-1937 a visiting professor, in 1937-1939 an associate professor. In 1937 he received Czechoslovak citizenship. Participating in international scientific conferences and congresses, he traveled a lot around Europe; these trips were paid for by the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry.

In the 1930s, Yakobson joined Eurasianism, one of the leaders of Eurasianism, N. S. Trubetskoy, was his closest associate in linguistics and correspondent, and the other, P. N. Savitsky, was the godfather of Yakobson, who converted to Orthodoxy in 1938.

Scandinavia

On April 9, 1940, having barely heard the announcement of the Nazi invasion of Norway, the Jacobsons, without even stopping home for documents, fled to the Swedish border and entered Sweden on April 23 as refugees. There Jacobson taught at Uppsala University.

USA

1942-1946 - Professor of General Linguistics at the Free School for Higher Studies (English), a kind of French university organized by the French and Belgian governments in exile.

1943-1946 - also visiting professor of linguistics at Columbia University. At the same time, he acted as an employee of the Czechoslovak military intelligence in the United States.

1944 - became one of the founders of the New York Linguistic Circle (English) and his magazine Word (English).

1946 - the Department of Czechoslovak Studies was organized at Columbia University ( Chair of Czekoslovak Studies), where Jacobson worked from the day of its foundation, but in 1949 decided to leave the university due to constant accusations of pro-communist sympathies.

1949-1965 - Professor of Slavonic Languages and Literature at Harvard University (since 1965 Professor Emeritus).

In 1948 he published a detailed refutation of André Mazon's hypothesis about the falsity of The Tale of Igor's Campaign. The scholarly discussion surrounding the publication has encountered some political difficulties (especially in France) because, according to Jacobson, "many do not believe Mazon, but consider his debunking of the Russian cultural tradition a handy tool in the anti-communist campaign." At Columbia University, students distributed leaflets accusing Jacobson of supporting the communist line in his book on The Word.

In 1959 he founded the magazine International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics and became its chief editor.

On July 18, 1982, he died at his home in Cambridge (Massachusetts). Buried in the cemetery Mount Auburn. On his tombstone it is written in Russian, in Latin transcription: "russkij filolog".

Trips to the USSR

1956, May 17-25. At the invitation of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he participated in a meeting in Moscow on the preparation of the IV International Congress of Slavists.
1958, September 1-10. Member of the IV International Congress of Slavists in Moscow.
1962, October 1-10. Participated in the meeting of the International Committee of Slavists in Moscow
1964, August 3-10. Member of the VII International Congress of Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences in Moscow.
1966, August 4-September 8. Participant of the XVIII International Congress on Psychology (Moscow), International Seminar on the Production and Perception of Speech (Leningrad), summer school on semiotics (Tartu), celebrations on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Shota Rustaveli (Tbilisi). He gave lectures in , in , in .
1967, August 17-24.
1979, September 29-October 4. Participant of the II International Symposium on the Problems of the Unconscious in Tbilisi.

Family

Brother - historian, political scientist and bibliographer Sergei Osipovich Yakobson(-), Director of Slavic Studies and Central Europe at the Library of Congress (his second wife is a Voice of America radio host) Elena Alexandrovna Yakobson, -) .

Another brother, Mikhail Yakobson, was deported from France during the German occupation and died in a concentration camp.

Wives

Contribution to science

With his active work in any place of stay (Moscow, Prague, New York), R. O. Yakobson made a significant (and sometimes decisive not only nationally, but also globally) contribution to the development of linguistics as a science. One of the founders of structuralism in linguistics and literary criticism. Some of his writings are of great interest to psycholinguistics.

The first significant work of Yakobson was the study of the peculiarities of the language of the futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov (1919). Contrasting poetic language with natural language, Jacobson proclaimed that "poetry is language in an aesthetic function" and therefore "is indifferent in relation to the object it describes." This thesis formed the basis of the aesthetics of early Russian formalism, which overturned the traditional relationship of form and content in a literary work. In a later article (1928), co-authored with Yu. N. Tynyanov, it is said that although literary criticism operates with its own internal laws, these laws must be correlated with other areas of culture - politics, economics, religion and philosophy.

In a study on the comparison of Russian and Czech systems of versification (1923), Jacobson focuses on the sound segments of words called phonemes, which do not have their own meaning, but their sequences are the most important means of expressing meanings in the language. Interest in the sound side of the language led Yakobson to create (with the participation of N. S. Trubetskoy) a new branch of linguistics - phonology, the subject of which is the differential features of the sounds that make up phonemes. Jakobson identified 12 binary acoustic features that make up phonological oppositions, which he claims are the linguistic universals underlying any language.

The method of structural analysis in terms of binary oppositions was a major influence on the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss; its use by Levi-Strauss in the analysis of myth marked the beginning of French structuralism. Jacobson, along with Levi-Strauss, is the author of the idea of the emergence of language as a combination of gestures and cries, which turned into phonemes.

The foundations of another new direction in science - neurolinguistics - were laid in Jacobson's work on aphasia (1941), in which he connects speech disorders with neurological data on the structure of the brain. This study provided a physiological justification for his doctrine of metaphor (axis of selection) and metonymy (axis of combination) as two main opposed to each other ways of ordering language units, which also determine the difference between poetry and prose. This opposition soon became an integral part of the terminological apparatus of literary criticism.

Honorary titles and degrees

Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences (1949), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1950), Serbian Academy of Sciences (1955), Polish Academy of Sciences (1959)
Corresponding Member of the Finno-Ugric Society in Helsinki (1949), British Academy (1974)
Honorary Member of the Society for the Study of Mythology "Teonoya" in Brussels (1950), the International Phonetic Association (1951), the Royal Irish Academy (1961), the American Association for the Study of Armenology (1964), the Academy of Aphasia (1968), the Italian Association for the Study of Semiotics (1972), Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland(1974), The Mark Twain Society (1977), Associations modern languages (1978), New York Academy of Sciences (1978)
Foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Letters (1960), Finnish Scientific Society (1977)
Member of the Philological Society in London (1950), Acoustic Society of America (1951), International Committee of Slavists (1955), Scientific Committee of the World Psychiatric Association (1964)
Honorary Doctorates from the University of Cambridge (1961), University of Michigan (1963), University of New Mexico (1966), University of Grenoble (1966), University of Nice (1966), University of Rome (1967), Yale University (1967), Charles University in Prague (1968), Purkyne University in Brno (1968), University of Zagreb (1969), Ohio State University (1970), Tel Aviv University (1974), Harvard University (1975), Columbia University (1976), University of Copenhagen (1979 ), Ruhr University (1980), Georgetown University (1980), Brandeis University (1981), Oxford University (1981)
President of the Linguistic Society of America (1956)
Vice-President of the International Association of Modern Slavic Languages and Literatures in Paris (1952),

Russian-American philologist, linguist, literary critic, semiotician, culturologist. One of the founders of the Moscow, Prague, New York linguistic circles and OPOYAZ. Graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. From 1921 he lived abroad: in Czechoslovakia (1921-1938), Denmark, Norway and Sweden (1939-1941), USA (1941-1982), where he taught at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All these years he maintained close ties with Russian scientists.

Y.'s views were formed under the influence of Husserl's phenomenology, French poetry (Mallarmé), Russian culture, and Russian avant-garde (Khlebnikov). He developed his theory of language on the basis of a critical rethinking of the ideas of F. de Saussure in collaboration with N. S. Trubetskoy, in dialogue with L. Elmslev and other linguists. At the center of research interests Y. was the dual unity of sound and meaning in speech and language, which served as the basis of his phonological concept and poetics. Ya. made a significant contribution to the development of phonology, to the renewal and expansion of its competence. He proposed to consider as its subject not phonemes, but distinctive features, extended the application of structural principles to the field of morphology, significantly strengthened the role of diachrony in phonology, which allowed him to deepen the theory of language evolution. Using a typological approach, he found the key to explaining the profound shifts and changes taking place in the language. Unlike Saussure, he did not believe that the connection between the signifier (sound) and the signified (meaning) is arbitrary, not motivated by anything.

Equally significant was the contribution of Ya. in the development of other areas of linguistics. His studies of the general system of meanings of the verb contributed to the development of modern semantics. He played an important role in the development latest methods grammatical description of linguistic phenomena. His original work on the Eurasian linguistic unity significantly enriched general linguistics. Ya. did a lot to determine the place of linguistics among other sciences, to bring it closer to mathematics, communication theory and other scientific disciplines, which contributed to the renewal of its conceptual apparatus. He was the initiator of the application of linguistic methods in comparative mythology, ethnology and anthropology, which found numerous followers and led to the emergence of new scientific directions. In the early 1950s, he initiated a revival of interest in semiotics, which subsequently developed rapidly (see: semiotic aesthetics). Many of Ya's ideas formed the basis structuralism, understood in a philosophical sense. He was one of the first to study the points of contact between linguistics and biology, the existing correspondences between the linguistic and genetic codes, the correlation of speech disorders with the activities of certain brain centers. In one of his last works, he considers the question of the role of the unconscious in the functioning of language. Based on his own results and studies of other authors, he put forward a philosophical hypothesis about the predestination of our ideas about the world of languages. The study of language Y. organically combined with research in the field of literary criticism. He created a completely new concept of poetics, which is based on a linguistic view of verbal creativity - literature, poetry and folklore.

In the interwar years, his thought moved mainly in line with the ideas of the formal school (see: formal method) and the Russian avant-garde - with their radicalism, extremes, the search for "abstruse" (see: Zaum) or non-objective language, etc. Ya. puts forward the famous concept of “literaryness”, meaning by it mainly the linguistic, grammatical aspect of literature and defining it as the real subject of literary criticism. He also proclaims the technical, formal device as the "sole hero" of the science of literature. Later, Y.'s views become more balanced, although the problem of the unity of literature and linguistics, grammar and poetry remains the main and central one for him. In his theory of verbal communication, he singles out six main functions of language, highlighting among them the poetic one, which is inherent in all linguistic forms, but becomes dominant only in poetry. Hence - "poetry is a language in its aesthetic function", and poetics - "is a linguistic study of the poetic function of verbal messages in general and poetry in particular".

I. emphasized that the study of the features of language in poetry allows you to more fully explain both its functioning and its historical evolution. Poetry plays a double role in relation to language: it presupposes its violation and at the same time reveals the operation of hidden laws that cannot be revealed by other ways of using it. It is not a deviation from ordinary language, but the realization of its latent possibilities. Accordingly, poetics and linguistics help each other in the knowledge of both ordinary and poetic language. Unlike traditional literary criticism, where the focus is on the figurativeness of words, their hidden meaning and the associations of thoughts and feelings they cause, Ya. explores the place and role of grammatical figures in the total symbolism of the work, which is reflected in the title of one of his works - “Poetry Grammar and Grammar of Poetry.

Ya. explicated the poetics of folklore, especially proverbs and sayings, interest in which arose already in his gymnasium years. He became one of the founders of text linguistics, the subject of which is not a phrase or statement, as it was before, but precisely a text or discourse. A comparative study of the ancient structures of Slavic and Indo-European verse contributed to the deepening of our understanding of Indo-European culture as a whole.

Theory in the works of Ya. is inextricably linked with practice. His pen belongs to interesting studies of the work of V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky, B. Pasternak. Based on the two types of construction of the work he singled out - depending on the predominance of either metaphor or metonymy - he proposed an original criterion for classifying both writers and genres of literature and other arts. Carried out jointly with K. Levi-Strauss the analysis of Ch. Baudelaire's sonnet "Cats" has become a classic example of linguistic analysis of a poetic work. I. had a significant impact on modern humanities and philosophy. The ideas put forward by him and the generalizations made go beyond the framework of linguistics and literary criticism and concern all art and culture in general.

Main op.: Selected works. M., 1985; Poetic works. M., 1987.

Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Yakobson Roman Osipovich[R. 11(23). 10.1896, Moscow], Russian and American linguist, literary critic. He graduated from the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages (1914) and Moscow University (1918). Since 1921 abroad. Professor at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the founders of the Moscow, Prague, New York linguistic circles, one of the founders of structuralism (see also Structural Linguistics). The main works are devoted to theoretical linguistics (phonology, the theory of differential features, the problem of "language conjunctions", typology, linguistic universals, the general theory of cases, description of the verb system, etc.), Slavic languages (primarily Russian), poetics (poetry, metrics). He studied early Slavic poetry and epics, Slavic mythology, rituals, works of ancient Russian literature, features of the language and style of Russian writers of the 19th-20th centuries, Dante, W. Shakespeare, M. Eminescu, B. Brecht, and others. He published many studies of poetic texts. Honorary member of many national academies, scientific societies and universities.

Cit.: Selected writings, v. 1-2, 4, The Hague-P., 1962-66, 1971; Questions de poetique, P., .

Lit.: Roman Jakobson. A bibliography of his writings, The Hague - P., 1971.

V. N. Toporov.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roman Osipovich Yakobson(Eng. Roman Jakobson, October 11 (23), 1896, Moscow - July 18, 1982, Boston, USA) - Russian and American linguist and literary critic, one of the largest linguists of the 20th century, who influenced the development of the humanities not only with his innovative ideas, but also active organizational activities. Member of the First Russian avant-garde. Works on the general theory of language, phonology, morphology, grammar, Russian language, Russian literature, poetics, Slavic studies, psycholinguistics, semiotics and many other areas of humanitarian knowledge.

Biography

Since 1921 in exile in Czechoslovakia. He emigrated from the Nazi-occupied Czech Republic to Denmark and Norway, and from 1941 to the USA, where he became a professor of Slavic languages and literature at Harvard University (1949-1967).

With his active work in any place of residence (Moscow, Prague, New York), he organized linguistic circles that made a significant (and sometimes decisive not only nationally, but also globally) contribution to the development of linguistics as a science - the Moscow Linguistic Circle, OPOYAZ , Prague Linguistic Circle. One of the founders of structuralism in linguistics and literary criticism. Some of his works are of great interest to psycholinguistics.[source?]

Major writings

The first significant work of Yakobson was the study of the peculiarities of the language of the futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov (1919). Contrasting poetic language with natural language, Jacobson proclaimed that "poetry is language in an aesthetic function" and therefore "is indifferent to the object it describes." This thesis formed the basis of the aesthetics of early Russian formalism, which overturned the traditional relationship between form and content in a literary work. In a later article (1928), co-authored with Yu.N. Tynyanov, it is said that although literary criticism operates with its own internal laws, these laws must be correlated with other areas of culture - politics, economics, religion and philosophy.

In a study comparing the Russian and Czech systems of versification (1923), Yakobson focuses on the sound segments of words called phonemes, which do not have their own meaning, but their sequences are the most important means of expressing meanings in the language. Interest in the sound side of the language led Yakobson to create (with the participation of N.S. Trubetskoy) a new branch of linguistics - phonology, the subject of which is the differential features of the sounds that make up phonemes. Jakobson established 12 binary acoustic features that make up phonological oppositions, which, according to him, are linguistic universals that underlie any language. The method of structural analysis in terms of binary oppositions had a great influence on the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss; its application by Levi-Strauss in the analysis of myth marked the beginning of French structuralism.