Jakobson, Roman 1971 [1967]. Linguistics in Relation to Other Sciences. In: Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 655-696.
The necessity to combine the internal consolidation of linguistics with a substantian widening of its horizon was enunciated by Edward Sapir shortly after the Hague Congress and most probably as an immediate response to the latter's platform. He argued that linguists, whether they like it or not, "must become increasingly concerned with the many anthropological, sociological, and psychological problems which invade the field of language. It is difficult for a modern linguist to confine himself to his traditional subject matter. Unless he is somewhat unimaginative, he cannot but share in some or all of the mutual interests which tie up linguistics with anthropology and culture history, with sociology, with psychology, with philosophy, and, more remotely, with physics and physiology". (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 655)
The modern semiotician is in a similar position. He cannot confine himself to almost anything, but gradually becomes capable of speaking at least five minutes about almost anything.
It is symptomatic that the problem of interrelations between the sciences of man appears to be centered upon linguistics. That fact is due primarily to the unusually regular and self-contained pattern of language and to the basic role which it plays in the framework of culture; and, on the other hand, linguistics is recognized both by anthropologists and psychologists as the most progressive and precise among the sciences of man and, hence, as a methodological model for the remainder of those disciplines. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 655)
Jakobson's linguocentrism has no limits. He ascribes to linguistics what we today ascribe to semiotics. Language does indeed play an important role, but Jakobson's own account makes it sound as if it's the only significant player in the theatre of culture.
Already at the treshold of our century Peirce assigned to "the vast and splendidly developed science of linguistics" a privileged position among the "studies of mental performance and products" (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 655)
Lets make an effort and check this out.
As a second order, we have psychotaxy, not a very good name for classificatory psychognosy or the study of kinds of mental manifestation. This order falls into two suborders, the one embracing studies of mental performances and products, the other of incarnations, or ensoulments of mind. To the latter suborder I would refer all studies of the minds of insects and (when there are any) of octopuses, of sexual characteristics, of the seven ages of human life, of professional and racial types, of temperaments and characters. To the former suborder, I would refer the vast and splendidly developed science of linguistics, of customs of all kinds, of Brinton's ethnology generally. (CP 1.271)
Where in this is Peirce assigning "a privileged position" to linguistics? He simply refers linguistics and ethnology to the "studies of mental performances and products". Yet again we have Jakobson ascribing a hierarchy where there originally was none.
Language is one of the sign systems, and linguistics as the science of verbal signs is but a part of SEMIOTIC, the general science of signs which was foreseen, named, and delineated in John Locke's Essay: "σημειωτική or the 'doctrine of signs', the most usual whereof being words" (Book IV, Ch. XXI, § 4). (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 657)
I can agree with words being "the most usual" type of signs. But Jakobson seems way too contended with the usual although he acknowledges that linguistics is "but a part of semiotic" he doesn't care much about what those other parts could be.
Unquestionably, Locke and Saussure were right: language is the central and most important among all human semiotic systems. On these grounds "linguistics is the chief contributor to semiotic", as Leonard Bloomfield stated. Yet, on the other hand, any confrontation of language with the structure of different sign patterns is of vital significance for linguistics, since it shows what properties are shared by verbal signs with some or all other semiotic systems and what the specific features of language are. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 658)
Decades earlier Susanne K. Langer wrote that in comparing language with non-discursive forms of symbolization robs the latter of its unique properties. that is, Jakobson contends that linguistics gain from the "confrontation" with other systems; while Langer warns that other systems lose their details in "comparison" with language.
On the other hand, written language, sometimes underrated by linguists, deserves an autonomous scientific analysis with due respect to the particular characters of writing and reading. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 658-659)
1967 (when this article was written) was also the year when Derrida first published his
De la grammatologie. It established Derridas reputation and discussed, among others, the work of Jakobson. Specifically, Derrida writes that: "The argument of Jakobson and Halle [...] invokes the secondariness of writing in the colloquial sense: "Only after having mastered speech does one graduate to reading and writing." [in their
Fundamentals of Language]"
More or less formalized languages used as artificial constructs for various scientific or technical purposes may be termed transforms of natural language. The comparative study of formalized and natural languages is of great interest for the elicitation of their convergent and divergent characters and requires a close cooperation of linguists with logicians as experts in formalized languages. According to Bloomfield's reminder, which is still opportune, LOGIC "is a branch of science closely related to linguistics". (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 659)
Welp, there goes the question of what "natural language" is opposed to. Not "unnatural language" as it turns out, but to "formalized language". Basically, there is "human language" which, among its great variety of subcodes has a stratum that is "natural" - everyday, free, creative; and a stratum that is "formalized" - like the language of logic and analytical philosophy, bureauratese, etc.
One of the chief pioneers in the mathematical discussion of the finiteness problem, Emil Post, pointed to the decisive role which "language of the ordinary kind" plays in the "birth of new ideas", their rise "above the sea of the unconscious", and the subsequent mutation of vaguer, intuitive processes "into connections between precise ideas". (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 659)
Another case of water metaphor for consciousness (like Peirce's "lake of consciousness").
A further area of semiotic embraces a wide range of idiomorphic systems which are but indirectly related to language. Gesture accomanying speech is defined by Sapir as an "excessive supplementary" class of signs. Despite the usual concomitance of gesticulation with verbal utterances, there is no one-to-one equivalence between the two systems of communication. There are, moreover, semiotic patterns of bodily motions disjoined from speech. These patterns, as in general all sign systems independent in their structure from language and performable also out of touch with verbal means, must be subjected to a comparative analysis with special regard for the convergences and divergences between any given semiotic structure and language. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 661)
No, but why? Why should systems independent from language be compared to language? What good will come from it? Even more so that there is a long history of such comparative studies that have yielded very little of actual importance.
The classification of human sign systems must resort to several criteria as, for instance: the relation between the signans and signatum (in accordance with Peirce's triadic division of signs into indices, icons, and symbols with the transitional varieties); discrimination between sign production and ere semiotic display of ready-made objects; difference between merely bodily and instrumental production of signs; distinction between pure and applied semiotic structures; visual or auditory, spatial or temporal semiosis; homogeneous and syncretic formations; various relations between the addresser and addressee, in particular interpersonal, intrapersonal or pluripersonal communication. Each of these divisions must abviously take into account diverse intermediate and hybrid forms. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 661)
What is a "merely bodily" production of signs? The distinction between pure and applied semiotics comes from Morris. I am not sure if semiosis can be differentiated in media, modality or channel - e.g. what could "spatial semiosis" and "temporal semiosis" exactly be; I thought semiosis is semiosis, no matter what modality the representamen happens to occur in. And the latter bit is obviously Rueschian with "group" and "society" levels of communication replaced with "pluripersonal" (not a term in English, but similar with Morris's "plurisituational").
The question of presence and hierarchy of those basic functions which we observe in language - fixation upon the referent, code, addresser, addressee, their contact or, finally, upon the message itself - must be applied also to the other semiotic systems. In particular, a comparative analysis of structures determined by a predominant fixation upon the message (artistic function or, in other words, a parallel investigation of verbal, musical, pictorial, choreographic, theatrical, and filmic arts belongs to the most imperative and fruitfil duties of the semiotic science. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 661-662)
And indeed many tried to go about other semiotic systems via Jakobson's model, blissfully ignorant of a model of communication systems by Ruesch that already accommodated other semiotic systems. In a way this is also beautiful: a thorough model is first reduced to linguistic communication and this it is suggested that other systems should also be studied with this reduced model. It is also significant that
communication system meant "social situation" in Ruesch and "language" in Jakobson. For one it was an "interaction system" for the other a "sign system".
The antecedence of verbal signs in regard to all other deliberate semiotic activities is confirmed by studies of children's development. The "communicative symbolism" of chird's gestures after the rudiments of language have been mastered is noticeably distinct from the reflex movements of the speechless infant.
In brief, the subject matter of semiotic is the communication of any message whatsoever, whereas the field of linguistics is confined to the communication of verbal messages. Hence, of the 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. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 662)
Semiotics indeed deals with all types of messages, whether the sign-vehicles are objects, actions or words. Linguistics deals only with the latter - with words. This is perfectly valid. But what the hell does he mean by nonverbal communication presupposing "a circuit of verbal messages"? First of all, what is that - what is a circuit of verbal messages? And do glances, poses, pointing, facial expressions etc. really presuppose an exchange (it that is what he means) of verbal messages? Animals can communicate nonverbally, but because humans also have language they are somehow unable to do what animals do? What the hell, man.
If the cycle of semiotic disciplines is the nearest one to encompass linguistics, the next, wider concentric circle is the totality of communication disciplines. When we say that language or any other sign system serves as a medium of communication, we must caution at the same time against any restrictive conception of communicative means and ends. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 662)
A glance into Jakobson's conception of language as the central piece among other means of communication. And it could be argued that his own not-so-restrictive conception of "communication system" not as an ends but a means is why his model of communication is impractical - it does not apply to actual communication but to means of communication, e.g. what kinds of metalingual functions the linguistic message can fulfill in relation to the other components. The
addressee, for example, is exactly that - an addressee, someone to whom a message addressed - not an active
receiver who has to perceive, evaluate and respond, as it does in Ruesch's model. And I have to correct myself - Ruesch's model
is a model, but not a model of (verbal) communication (act) but a model of a communication system.
In particular, it was often overlooked that besides the more palpable, interpersonal face of communication, its intrapersonal aspect is equally important. Thus, for instance, inner speech, keenly conceived by Peirce as an "internal dialogue", is a cardinal factor in the network of language and serves as a connection with the self's past and future. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 662-663)
I cannot find "internal dialogue" in Peirce (perhaps Jakobson is thinking of Võgatsky?). I did find that Peirce distinguishes internal will (self-control, inhibitory will) and internal sense (introspection) (CP 1.383), or in other terms internal volition and internal observation ((CP 1.386). It is also relevant that "internal operations of the mind" (as CP calls them 5.611) are only "mostly of the nature of language" (Peirce in Moxley 2004: 755). That is, the connection between the self's past and future involves all three varieties of interpretants.
The natural task of linguistics was to bring forward the primordial significance of the concept "communication" for social sciences. In Sapir's formulation, "every cultural pattern and every single act of social behavior involves communication in either an explicit or an implicit sense". Far from being "a static structure", society appears as "a highly intricate network of partial or complete understandings between the members of organizational units of every degree of size and complexity", and it is being "creatively reaffirmed by particular acts of a communicative nature". While realizing that "language is the most explicit type of communicative behavior", Sapir saw both the significance of the other ways and systems of communication and their multifarious connections with verbal intercourse. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 663)
I don't know what the "primordial" significance of this concept could be, but in ancient Rome, the concept did have a significance for social life. Only, it "did not signify the general arts of human connection via symbols, nor did it suggest the hope for some kind of mutual recognition. Its sense was not in the least mentalistic:
communicatio generally involved tangibles" (
quoted from J. D. Peters' 1999.
Speaking into the air: A history of the idea of communication). These "tangibles" included sharing (by giving or receiving), imparting (with something), building (a fortification), fortifying and strengthening, etc. Most interestingly, communication involved the rhetorical function of "making the audience appear to take part in the discussion". This may be why we sometimes call
informing communication.
All these levels of communication assign a fundamental role to language. First, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically, they imply the preexistence of language. Second, all forms of communication mentioned are accompanied by some verbal and/or other semiotic performances. Third, if non-verbalized, all of them are verbalizable, i.e. translatable into verbal messages. Here we do not dwell at length on the still controversial question of delimiting social anthropology and SOCIOLOGY and we treat both of them as two aspects of one and the same discipline. According to an epigrammatic formula, social anthropology is the science of man as a talking animal, and sociology is the science of man as a writing animal. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 663)
I don't get it at all. First of all, exchange of messages, exchange of utilities (goods and services) and exchange of women (or mates) are not "levels" - there is no scale, quantity or extent involved. These are
types or
forms of communication - exchange of messages, objects/services and people as objects/services. Okay, and all of them are accompanied by speech AND other semiotic performances - say, bodily behaviour (facial expressions and hand gestures). But what does he mean by "non-verbalizing" semiotic performances? Or is he implying that EVERYTHING nonverbal can be translated into verbal messages? In that case how would he approach microexpressions, (random) gesticulation, the 15 distinct eyelid positions, etc? To my knowledge these are not verbalizable, at least not in any sensible way. The distinction here between anthropology and sociology is weirder yet, I won't even dare addressing that. I'll just note that it originates from J. Goody and I. Watt's paper "The Consequences of Literacy".
Ritual usually combines speech and pantomimic components, and, as noted by Leach, there occur in these ceremonial customs certain kinds of information which are never verbalized patently by the performers but are expressed only in action. This semiotic tradition is, however, always dependent, at least on a framing verbal pattern which passes between generations. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 664)
Seems true, but an example couldn't hurt.
G. Tarde's influence upon Saussure's doctrine in such matters as circuit, exchange, value, output/input, producer/consumer is well-known. Many common topics, as, for instance, "dysamic synchrony", contradictions within the system, and its continual motion, undergo similar developments in both fields. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 665)
Gabriel Tarde is another author that I wish I had time to get into. He has even written one novel,
Underground Man (English translation in 1905) that is available on archive.org.
Three integrated sciences encompass each other and present three gradually increasing degrees of generality: 1) Study in communication of verbal messages = linguistics; 2) study in communication of any messages = semiotic (communication of verbal messages implied); 3) study in communication = social anthropology jointly with economics (communication of messages implied). (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 666)
From this standpoint it seems even obvious that Ruesch is not a linguist or a semiotician, but a "communicationist".
Since verbal messages analyzed by linguists are linked with communication of nonverbal messages or with exchange of utilities and mates, the linguistic research is to be supplemented by wider semiotic and anthropological investigation. As foreseen in Trubetzkoy's letter of 1926, the integrated science of communication is intended to show, according to Bright's formulation, "the systematic covariance of linguistic structure and social structure". (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 669)
But is there an integrated science of communication? Wescott's biosocial
coenetics seems closest to this aim, but his approach was never realized. There are also those who speak of communicationists (e.g. John Bulwer was a renaissance communicationist) and lately Richard Lanigan has proposed communicology, which seems to
inter alia unite the communicational aspects of Ruesch, Jakobson and Lotman.
Such significant questions as the inward aspect of speech, the so-called strategies of mind deployed by the interlocutors, require psychological exprimentation and elucidation. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 671)
This I think is what semiotics can do for the nonverbalism - provide an approach to the operations of the mind that are involved in comprehension of nonverbal behaviour, whether that of another or one's own, or the nonverbal communication between the former and the latter. Morris's behavioristic semiotic can provide for the semiotic link, but it too readily dismisses with mind and cognition. To make Morris more comprehensive, it is necessary to bring Mead and Peirce, into discussion and elaborate different aspects that are lacking in any of them taken individually. That woud be, of course, to avoid experimentation and elucidation and take the theoretical or speculative route instead, until later psychologists (as well as semioticians) can be brought to chime in.
...finally, the significance of language for cognitive operations as compared with the prelingual status. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 671)
"Prelingual" is one of the early synonyms for "nonverbal". Infants (
infantia), deaf-and-dumb (no verbal input or output), Speechless (
der Sprachlose) are all prelinguistic in that language hasn't been acquired yet. Nonlinguistic is another such synonym, but there is no time dimension (as in
pre). Language and cognitive operations is reductionistic in a typically Jakobsonian manner. I we were to take Peirce seriously, we would proceed studying thought-processes starting with the perceptual fact (Firstness of experience) (e.g. CP 2.27)
Mutatis mutandis, analogous psychological problems arise with respect to other forms of semiotic communication and to communication in general. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 671)
"There is no communication without a system of signs" (Cherry 1977 [1957]: 6). All communication is necessarily semiotic. Unless of course you are seriously consider viewing economic and kinship matters as message exchanges as communication, in which case you have to specify that explicitly sign-based (and mostly verbal) message-exchanges are explicitly "semiotic". As for the economic and kinship forms of communication, today we could probably include in this list of quasi-communicative forms also fiscal exchanges (over the internet and bank-links), municipal exchanges (local government and other political and democratic processes), judicial exchanges etc. Much of contemporary social life could be looked from this standpoint because a
global incorporation approach to communication includes
everything (or at least as much as possible - it is oriented towards the maximum). Wescott's minimal/maximal distinction of communication should be compared with this idea.
One of the typical examples of the psychological preoccupation with performances and performers is the psychoanalytic endeavor to disclose the privata privatissima of language by provoking teh verbalization of unverbalized, subliminal experiences, the exteriorization of inner speech, and both theory and therapeutics my find a stimulation in Lacan's attempts to revise and reinterpret the correlation between signans and signatum in the mental and verbal experience of the patient. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 672)
The exterioriation of inner speech acconts for several forms of autocommunication. Googling "
privata privatissima" got me this:
Tolstoi's diarieus represent a similar mode of writing. He kept them from early on (1847), and ultimately developed several categories: those to be published, intimate ones that he shared with his wife, and the privata privatissima - for himself only.
The prominent position of Tolstoi's own biography shows, in purely statistical terms, his sensitivity to his own self. (Pomorska 1992: 66)
From:
Pomorska, Krystyna 1992. Jakobsonian Poetics and Slavic Narrative: From Pushkin to Solzhenitsyn. Edited by Henryk Baran. Durham: Duke University Press. A statement on par with both Fjodor Dostoyevsky and Sage Francis.
Several essential properties notably separate verbal signs form all kinds of animal messages: the imaginative and creative power of language; its ability to handle abstractions and fictions and to deal with things and events remote in space and/or time, in contradistinction to the hic et nunc of animal signals; that structural hierarchy of linguistic constituents which was labeled "double articulation" in D. Bubrix's penetrating essay of 1930 about the uniqueness and origin of human language, namely, the dichotomy of merely distinctive (phonemic) and significative (grammatical) units and a further scission of the grammatical pattern into the word and sentence levels (coded units vs. coded matrices); the use of diremes, especially propositions; and, finally, the assemblage and reversibile hierarchy of diverse concurrent verbal functions and operations (referential, conative, emotive, phatic, poetic, metalinguistic). The number of distinct signals produced by an animal is quite restricted, so that the entire corpus of the different messages is tantamount to their code. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 673)
Too bad I can't check this reference:
Bubrix, D. V. 1930. Neskol'ko slow a potoke reči. K voprosu o proisxoždenii reči. Bjuleten' Leningradskogo obščestva issledovatelej kul'tury finno-ugorskix narodnostej 5: 4-17.. Could it be that he derived these functions from Bubrix's paper? And wouldn't the statement about code here amount to something like an animals
Umwelt being its "code"? It is obvious that in cane of humans the metalingual function is necessary: the animals' code may be restructed, but human language is unrestricted and we have the liberty to improve it any way we find necessary - only with the sidenote that we have to be able to explain our own code to another to make innovations intelligible.
"The adaptive nature of communication" in its multiform varieties, which has been outlined pithily by Wallace and Srb, involves two correlate genera - self-adjustment to the environment and the adjusting of the environment to one's own needs. Indeed, it becomes one of the "most exciting" biological problems and - again mutatis mutandis - it is also a vital concern of present-day linguistics. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 675)
I cannot deny, this line of thought is interesting, but generally lacking in our semiotics. Uexküll comes closest to this, with his analogy between the eye and the sun.
Like any other social modeling system tending to maintain its dynamic equilibrium, language ostensively displays its self-regulating and self-steering properties. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 676)
Compare this to "logonomic systems" in Vannini (2007: 117).
The spectacular discoveries of the last few years in MOLECULAR biology are presented by the explorers themselves in terms borrowed from linguistics and communication theory. The title of the book by G. and M. Beadle, The Language of Life, is not a mere figurative expression, and the extraordinary degree of analogy between the systems of genetic and verbal information fully justifies the guiding statement of the volume: "The deciphering of the DNA code has revealed our possession of a language much older than hieroglyphics, a language as old as life itself, a language that is the most living language of all." (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 678)
The beginnings of modern biosemiotics?
Hence, we may state that among all the information-carrying systems, the genetic code and the verbal code are the only ones based upon the use of discrete components which, by themselves, are devoid of inherent meaning but serve to constitute the minimal senseful units, i.e. entities endowed with their own, intrinsic meaning in the given code. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 679)
Something to add to the discrete/continuous distinction: discrete units are inherently devoid of signification, while continuous "texts" (such as pictures, sculptures, film, etc.) are "minimal units" in themselves and "inherently significant".
Linguistics and cognate sciences deal chiefly with speech circuit and similar forms of intercommunication, i.e. with the alternate roles of the addresser and the addressee who gives either and overt or at least a silent reply to the interlocutor. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 680)
Another name for intercommunication is
heterocommunication. They are opposed to intracommunication and autocommunication.
If a representative of one type has to recite, sing, or play a work of a poet or composer of the same kinesthetic type, the performance appears to be reinforced by this affinity, bit if the author and performer belong to two totally opposite types, the reproduction undergoes inhibition (Hemmungen). It turned out that these three idiosyncratic types and their interrelations apply to all kinds of our motor activities, such as the manner of bodily, manual, and facial movements, gait, handwriting and drawing, dancing, sport, and courtship. The attractions and repulsions between different types act not only within a single motor sphere but also across the diverse spheres. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 682)
Jakobson has subsumed everything I would include in "nonverbal behaviour" under the title of "motor activity". Body motion is obviously the key to these notions.
An even more resolute claim for the autonomous status of the science of life was expressed by the eminent Harvard biologist George Gaylord Simpson: "The physical sciences have rightly excluded teleology, the principle that the end determines the means, that the result is retroactively connected to the cause by a factor of purpose, or that usefulness is in any sense explanatory. But in biology it is not only legitimate but also necessory to ask and answer questions teleological in aspect concerning the function or usefulness to living organisms of everything that exists and that occurs in them". Simpson repeatedly insists that "the purposeful aspect of organisms is incontrovertible" and that the antiteleogolical reductionism "omits the bios from biology". (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 685)
Yes, I sniggered at that name. And these same issues are relevant in cultural semiotics: e.g. is there purposiveness in cultural processes? Especially in relation with
Culture and Explosion.
Pittendrigh proposed the substitution of "teleonomy" for "teleology in order to make it clear that "the recognition and description of end-directedness" is freed from undesirable associations with the Aristotelian metaphysical dogma. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 685)
Wiki elaborates that teleology applies to agents that can model/imagine their future and teleonomy applies to goal-directedness of living organisms due to evolutionary characteristics.
Monod describes the central nervous system as "the most evolved of teleonomic structures" and ventures to interpret the emergence of the superior, specifically human system as a sequel to the appearance of language which changed the biosphere into "a new realm, the noosphere, the domain of ideas and consciousness". (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 686)
In relation with the semiosphere we are constantly reminded of Vernadsky and his biosphere with a note about the noosphere, but the name of Jacques Monod is rarely if ever mentioned. It turns out that Althusser critiqued Monod heavily (might be interesting to look up some day).
The classification of aphasic impairments based on this analysis yields a patently coherent and symmetrical relational pattern, and when we confront this strictly linguistic framework with the anatomical data, it proves to coincide with the topography of the cerebral lesions responsible for the diverse impairments. The prospective development of such interdisciplinary, "neurolinguistic" research in aphasic and psychotic speech will undoubtedly open new vistas for a comprehensive study of the brain and its functions as well as for the science of language and other semiotic systems. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 688)
Apparently "neurolinguistics" has proven itself as a science, despite the term being hijacked by the numbskulls who created neurolinguistic programming (NLP).
A further progress of comparative inquiry into aphasia, on the one hand, and into agraphia and alexia, on the other, must throw new light on the interrelation between spoken and written language, their ties and divergences, while general semiotic will benefit from a parallel research in language disorders and other forms of "asemasia" such as amusia or disturbances of gestual [sic] systems. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 688)
More jargon baggage. Searching these terms, it turns out that Sebeok has yet again been the one who keeps reiterating these terms. Add to these:
asymbolia.
Many more examples of new, common, theoretical and methodological problems could be named, as, for example, the concepts of symmetry and antisymmetry which aquire a still more important position in linguistics and in natural sciences, as well as questions of "temporal" or "morphic" determinism and of reversible fluctuations or irreversible changes. Several essential points common to sciences of communication and THERMODYNAMICS, in particular the "equivalence of negentropy and information", open new prospects. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 690)
More and more this article seems like a possible inspiration for Lotman's article on the semiosphere.
Actually, the information obtained from the outer world by the physicist consists merely of one-way "indexes", and in their interpretation he imposes upon the experience his own code of "symbols", an additional "work of imagination" (in Brillouin's parlance), whereas the code of verbal symbols actually exists and functions within any speech community as an indispensable and efficient tool in the reversible process of intercommunication. Consequently, the realistic investigator, a factual or virtual participant in such an exchange of communication symbols, merely translates them into a code of metalinguistic symbols and, hence, is enabled to achieve a higher verisimilitude in the interpretation of the phenomena observed. (Jakobson 1971 [1967]: 690)
I am soon about to write about the work of imagination upon interpreting bodily behaviours and experiences. The latter bit about "metalinguistic symbols" once again reifies Jakobsons linguocentrism - what is investigated is lingual and involves symbols, so the investigator "translates" them into symbols about symbols - a metalingual code. In nonverbal terms this is quite different, because what is investigated is not a priori symbolic, although the report made by external meta-channel observer is symbolic. Note also that the beginning of this quote is exactly the point I wish to make when I substitute "body language" with "body code".
Jakobson, Roman 1971 [1968]. Language in Relation to Other Communication Systems. In: Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 697-708.
When envisaging the roles of the participants in the speech event, we have to discern the several essential varieties of their interconnection, namely, the fundamental form of this relationship, the alternation of the encoding and decoding activities in the interloctutors, and the cardinal difference between such a dialogue and a monologue. A question to be studied is the increase in the "radius of communication", e.g., the multipersonal exchange of replies and rejoiners or the extended audience of a monologue which may even be addressed "to whom it may concern". (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 697)
So while Ruesch gives us kind of "arbitrary" levels of communication (intrapersonal, interpersonal, group and society), Jakobson takes a gradation-approach and views in as if "on the same level" but with a differing "radius".
On the other hand, it becomes ever clearer for psychological, neurological, and above all, linguistic research that language is a vehicle not only for interpersonal, but also for intrapersonal communication. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 697)
And of course even autocommunication is mainly linguistic in Jakobsons view.
Among many problems seen by Charles Sanders Peirce with a much greater sagacity than by his contemporaries were the substance and pertinence of the inner dialogues between the silent sayer and "that very same man as he will be a second after" The verbal intercourse which bridges the spatial discontinuity of its participants is supplemented by the temporal aspect of verbal communication which insures the continuity of one's past, present, and future. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 698)
This originates from CP 3.433 where Peirce discusses how "the deliverer makes signals to the receiver."
If among messages used in human communication the verbal ones play a dominant role, still we have to take into account also all further kinds of messages employed in human society and to investigate their structural and functional particularities without forgetting, however, that language is for all humanity the primary means of communication and that this hierarchy of communicative devices is necessarily reflected as well in all other, secondary types of human messages and makes them in various ways dependent upon language, namely, on its antecedent acquisition and on the human usage of patent or latent verbal performances to accompany or interpret any other messages. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 698)
The law of heterogeneous summation. "Other systems of signs than language should definitely be considered, but I'm not going to do that." And I wouldn't be surprised if this statement about language as the primary system and other systems as secondary and dependent on language may very well be one of the sources for our "secondary modeling systems" approach. That is, while originally, it seems, "secondary types" were essentially nonverbal - but in Jakobson, even nonverbal is dependent on language - then Lotman et al. might have read this as language and systems that are explicitly language-based (verbal art, poetry, prose, myths).
Semiotic, as an inquiry into the communication of all kinds of messages, is the nearest concentric circle that encompasses linguistics, whose research field is confined to the communication of verbal messages, and the next, wider concentric circle is an integrated science of communication which embraces social anthropology, sociology, and economics. Again and again one may quote Sapir's still opportune reminder that "every cultural pattern and every single act of social behavior involves communication in either an explicit or implicit sense". (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 698)
Such an integrated science of communication never arose, though. Mainly because including exchange of anything in a pan-communicational framework is untenable. Social anthropology, sociology and economics (to a degree) do deal with communication, but as a subsidiary interest (e.g. marketing). Sapirs statement is surely true, as general as it is, but it also suggests a "global incorporation" concept of communication. One can only doubt if absolutely
every cultural pattern involves communication (depending, once again, what you mean by culture and how you define a pattern).
...whatever level of communication we are treating, each of them implies some exchange of messages and thus cannot be isolated from the semiotic level, which in its turn assigns the prime role to language. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 699)
Actually, a good case could be made for the individual level being different from other levels on the basis that we do not need to verbalize to communicate with ourselves. That is, physiological autocommunication occurs without language.
Here attention will be focused upon the need for classification of sign systems and corresponding types of messages, praticularly with regard to language and verbal messages. Without efforts toward such a typology neither the communication of messages, nor even human communication in general can undergo a thorough scientific treatment. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 699)
The title of this paper got me wondering if Jakobson is not mistaken in his phrasing. Language is not a communication system. Language is a
sign system
for communication. And curiously, the study of human communication did indeed proceed without a classification of sign systems and corresponding types of messages. In the end, I think, there are too many systems to count them all (the case is similar with "memory systems" of the brain, of which there seems to be a virtually endless list). Also, our
Sign Systems Studies hasn't attempted such a typology, although it seems a suitable candidate for such work.
Besides the diverse types of semiosis (= variable relationship between signans and signatum), the nature of the signans itself is of great importance for the structure of messages and their typology. All five external senses carry semiotic functions in human society. Among innumerable examples one may cite handshakes, pats on the back, and kisses for touch, perfumes and incense for smell, the selection, succession, and grading of courses and drinks for taste. Although a systematic inquiry into the semiotic aspects of these senses in diverse cultures would be full of interest and of curious discoveries, it is evident that the most socialized, abundant, and pertinent sign systems in human society are based on sight and hearing. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 701)
The "channel approach" to communication was prevalent in the 1960s, but I don't think we can produce any good typology based on sensory modalities.
The prevalence of icons among purely spatial, visual signs and the predominance of symbols among purely temporal, auditory signs permit us to interconnect several criteria relevant in the classification of sign patterns and further their semiotic analysis and psychological interpretation. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 701)
This predominance is biased, because Jakobson considers speech, but not strepitus or ever general noise and sounds that have no symbolic meaning.
The two particularly elaborate systems of purely auditory and temporal signs, spoken language and music, presen a strictly discontinuous, as physicists would say, granual structure. They are composed of ultimate discrete elements, a principle alien to spatial semiotic systems. These ultimate elements and their combinations and rules of patterning are special, ad hoc shaped devices. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 701)
Discrete/continuous seems to be a relational category as well. Speech is continuous in Martin Joos's paper; music is often considered continuous and mainly, I think, because "ultimate discrete elements" in music depend on your perspective. Ultimately, I think, it would be best to trust Susanne K. Langer with this distinction - hers is also seemingly closer to Lotmans, but then again I'm not sure anymore.
According to the way of their production signs are to be divided into directly organic and instrumental. Among visual signs, gestures are directly produced by bodily organs, while painting and sculpture imply a use of instruments. Among auditory signs, speech and vocal music belong to the former type and instrumental music to the latter one. It is important to distinguish between instrumental production of signs and mere instrumental reproduction of organic signs. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 701)
Oh wow. That is a very literal interpretation of Ruesch's "instrumental actions". In Ruesch these rather seem to signify bodily actions undertaken with a goal-directedness and here the action itself serves as an instrument (e.g. raising a glass of water to the mouth, adjusting glasses, etc.), while what Jakobson has in mind here was treated at length by Edward T. Hall as "extensions" - a topic with which he influenced Marshall McLuhan and his famous approach to communication media.
The Gutenberg Galaxy was first published in 1962, but Jakobson doesn't bother to reference him.
A sign requires an interpreter. The prespicious type of semiotic communication involves two separate interpreters, the addresser of a message and its addressee. However, as mentioned above, inner speech condenses the addresser and addressee into one person, and the elliptic forms of intrapersonal communication are far from being confined to verbal signs alone. The mnemonic knot on a handkerchief made by Russians to remind themselves to accomplish an urgent matter is a typical example of an inner communication between the earlier and later self. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 702)
Oh wow. I vaguely remember Juri Lotman having a similar example, but I most definitely have not made a quote of it, so I don't know where.
The need for their interpretation as something that serves to infer the existence of something else (aliquid stat pro aliquo) makes the unwitting indexes into a variety of signs, but we must consistently take into account the decisive difference between communication which implies a real or alleged addresser and information whose source cannot be viewed as an addresser by the interpreter of the indications obtained. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 703)
Actually making some good sense. I don't know what preceded this, but it is followed by Burgoon & Saine's (1978) distinction of behavior, information and communication.
In previous studies of the present author an attempt was made to delineate the two fundamental factors which operate on any level of language. The first of these factors, selection, "is produced on the base of equivalence, similarity and dissimilarity, synonymity and antonymity", while the second, combination, the buildup of any chain, "is based on contiguity". When pursuing the role of these two factors in poetic language, it becomes clear that "the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection onto the axis of combination. Equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence". (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 704)
I wonder if anyone has ever compared these to James Mills' "contiguity law" and John Stuart Mills' "similarity law".
Bet elsewhere in poetry and in the bulk of representational visual art the introversive semiosis, always playing a cardinal role, coexists and coacts nonetheless with an extroversive semiosis, whereas the referential component is either absent or minimal in musical messages, even in so-called program music. What has been said here about the absence or scantiness of the referential, conceptial component does not discard the emotive connotation carride by music or by glossolalia and nonrepresentational visual art. Sapir's question remains opportune: "Does not the very potency of music reside in its precision and delicacy of expression of a range of mental life that is otherwise most difficult, most elusive of expression?" (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 705)
Ah, nuts. Montana made introversive semiosis sound like it had something to do with autocommunication. These terms are now in the territory of music semiology: introversive musical signs have a text (they are "programmed" in program music sense) and extroversive musical signs don't.
The study of communication must distinguish between homogeneous messages which use a single semiotic system and syncretic messages based on a combination or merger of different sign patterns. We observe specific habitual types of such combinations. Anthropology is faced with the task of comparative inquiry into traditional syncretisms and their spread in the ethnic cultures of the entire world. Apparently, we hardly find primitive cultures without poetry, but it seems that some of these cultures have no spoken but only sung verse; and, on the other hand, vocal music seems to be more widespread than instrumental music. Thus syncretism of poetry and music is perhaps primordial as compared to poetry independent of music and to music independent of poetry. Bodily visual signs display a propensity toward a combination with auditory sign sytems: manual gestures and facial movements function as signs supplementary to verbal utterances or as their substitutes, whereas movements involving the legs and the bulk of the body seem to be prevalently and in some ethnic cultures exclusively tied to instrumental music. Modern culture developes the most complex syncretic spectacles, such as musicals and in particular cinematic musicals, making joint use of several auditory and visual semiotic media. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 705)
Damn, another disappointment. Juri Lotman made "syncretic messages" out to seem something like a complementarity between the verbal and the visual, so I though maybe I can use it for elaborating
concursivity. But nah, syncretic messages are merely complementary.
The uniqueness of natural language among all other semiotic systems is manifest in its fundamentals. The properly generic meanings of verbal signs become particularized and individualized under the pressure of changeable contexts or of nonverbalized but verbalizable situations. (Jakobson 1971 [1968]: 707)
Beating a dead horse and another iteration of that weird "nonverbalized but verbalizable" context, the logic of which still eludes me.
Jakobson, Roman 1985 [1974]. A Glance at the Development of Semiotics. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 199-218.
...semiotics is called upon to study the diverse systems of signs and to bring out the problems which result from a methodical comparison of these voried systems, that is to say, the general problem of the SIGN: sign as a generic notion with respect to the particular classes of signs. (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 199)
And the diversity is indeed great, because the notion of a "sign system" can be stretched to such a degree that any text will appear as a system of signs. That is, every text creates its own unique code, which will reveal itself in the reading of the text. Concursive codes a good example, because they bring to focus the variety of ways that one can think about and describe bodily behaviour. Every author in this sense has a unique concursive system of signs.
Around the end of the seventeenth century, John Locke's famous essay, in its final chapter on the tripartite division of the sciences, promoted this complex problem to the level of the last of the "three great provinces of the intellectual world" and proposed to call it "σημειωτική or the 'Doctrine of signs', the most usual whereof being words", given thatto communicate our thoughts for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary. Those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make use of, are articulate sounds.
It is to words, conceived of as "the great instruments of cognition", to their use and to their relation to ideas that Locke devoted the third book of his Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (1694). (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 199)
I wish I could verify this source, but I can only find books I and II of Locke's
Essay. There may come a time when I will actually get to read it (as well as re-read
Leviathan), but that time is not now.
The book [Neues Organon] studies the difference in the use of natural and arbitrary signs (paragraphs 47 and 48); the natural signs of accets (natürliche Zeichen von Affekten) are those that first attract attention (paragraph 19). Lambert takes into account the significant role played by gestures, for example, "in order to enlighten the concept, which is dark in the soul [mind], or at least to give an indication of it to ourselves and to others", and he foresees the semiotic scope of simulacra (which reappear after a century in Peirce's list under the label of icons or likenesses). Lambert raises the question of signs whose internal structure is founded upon similarity relationships (Ähnlichkeit) and, in interpreting signs of a metaphorical order, he evokes the effects of synesthesia (paragraph 18). Despite the summary character of his remarks on non-verbal communication, neither music, nor coreagraphy, nor the blazon, nor the emblem, nor ceremanies espace the researcher's eye. The transformations of the signs (Verwandlungen) and the rules for their combination (Verbindungskunst der Zeichen) are placed on the agenda for further study. (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 201)
This is just good to know.
...Bolzano's semiotic thoughts bring to the surface the difference between the meaning (Bedeuting) of a sign as such and the significance (Sinn) that this sign acquires in the context of the present circumstance, then the difference between the sign (1) produced by the addresser (Urheber) and (2) perceived by the addressee who, himself, oscillates between understanding and misunderstanding (Verstehen und Missverstehen). The author makes a distinction between the thoughts and expressed interpretation of the sign (gedachte und sprachliche Auslegung)... (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 203)
Bolzano sounds like a thorough guy. The second case seems to be that of informational semiosis, e.g. adresser-less signs, which indeed are teetering on the edge of understanding and misunderstanding (perhaps even because there is no addresser to give metacommunicative instructions or otherwise supplement the signification, e.g. metalingual messages).
...to this classification he [Bolzano] adds lucid footnotes on the important distinction to be made between signs (Zeichen) and indices (Kennzeichen) which are devoid of an addresser, and finally on another pressing theme, the question of the relationship between interpersonal (an Andere) and internal (Sprechen mit sich selbst) communication. (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 203)
Sprehen mit sich selbst is literally "talking to yourself". Another early note on autocommunication.
Thus the interpreter and the interpretant designations have given rise to an unfortunate confusion, in spite of the distinction Peirce makes between the term interpreter, which designates the receiver and decoder of a message, and interpretant, that is, the key which th receiver uses to understand the message he receives. According to popularizers, the sole role attributed to the interpretant in Peirce's doctrine consistsin clarifying each sign by the mediating context, while in fact the brave "pioneer" of semiotics asks rather "to distinguish, in the first place, the Immediate Interpretant, which is the interpretant as it is revealed in the right understanding of the sign itself, and is ordinarily called the meaning of the sign" (IV.536). In other words, it is "all that is explicit in the signs itself, apart from its context and circumstances of utterance" (V.473). (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 206)
"The key which the receiver uses to understand the message he receives" is
metacommunicative cue or
instruction in Ruesch's parlance. There is a marked difference, of course: the interpretant is inherent is the
sign-process but the MC cue is inherent in the
message. This can certainly be overcome, but I'm afraid that uniting such grand and fruitful thinkers as Peirce and Ruesch would not only be explosive with innovations (that most will probably not understand) but also take a lot of time and effort. At the moment I'll just note that there is explosive potential for a semiotic theory of communication in combining these two.
Peirce casts light upon the ability of every sign to be translated into an infinite series of other signs which, in some regards, are always mutually equivalent (II.293). (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 206)
So does Dostoyevsky: "I exercise myself in reflection, and consequently with me every primary cause at once draws after itself another still more primary, and so on to infinity." (
Notes From the Underground, 1992: 12) I'm quite sure that countless many have remarked on this quality in human thought life. Peirce's uniqueness is in viewing thoughts as thought-signs; and consequently, Jakobson brought along his interest in translation. In Peirce we can actually find more explicit discussions of actual translations, e.g. his neologism
transuasion, but understanding that would necessitate understanding Peirce's categories better than just knowing about icon, index and symbol.
Saussure underlines the fact that language is far from being the only system of signs. There ane many others: writing, visual nautical signals, military trumpet signals, gestures of politeness, ceremonies, sets of rites; in the eyes of Saussure, "Customs have a semiological character". (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 209)
More lip service to the nonverbal.
According to the thesis Saussure maintained from the time of his preparation in 1894 of an unfinished study on William Dwight Whitney, "language is nothing more than one particular case of the Theory of Signs", andthis will be the major reaction of the study of language in the theory of signs, this will be the ever new horizon which it will have opened - to have tauht and revealed to the theory of signs a whole other and new side of the sign, that is to say that the sign does not begin to be really known until we have seen that it is not only a transmissible thing but by its very nature a thing destined to be transmitted.
(Therefore, in Peirce's terms, the sign demands the participation of an "interpreter".) (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 209-210)
This is where autocommunication can chime in. For what differentiates plain old semiosis from autocommunication is exactly the quality of being destined to be "transmitted" - even if the sender itself is the receiver, there is an intent to send it. Say, I wrote a letter to myself and I might not know which personality or hand to give it, but I nevertheless wrote it
to myself.
Those who consider the system of language signs as the only set worthy of being the object of the science of signs engage in circular reasoning (petitio principii). The egocentrism of linguists who insist on excluding from the sphere of semiotics signs which are organized in a different manner than those of language, in fact reduces semiotics to a simple synonym for linguistics. (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 213)
Yeah, its much better to pay lip service to other semiotic systems and implicitly reduce beautifully heterogeneous theoretical models (like those of Peirce and Ruesch) to linguistic precepts.
The relative complexity of signs such as a syntactic period, a monologue or an interlocution, does not change the fact that in any phenomenon of language everything is a sign. The distinctive features or the whole of a discourse, the linguistic entities, in spite of the structural differences in function and in breadth, all are subject to one common science, the science of signs. (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 213)
If you take language to be a sign-system then yes, anything about language is a sign. But you could equally well go the bio- or neurosemiotic route and claim that since neuroanatomy is signal-based then everything any organism ever does is also a sign. Pansemiotics?
In addition, the confrontation of language with "secondary modeling structures" and with mythology particularly points to a rich harvest and calls upon able minds to undertake an analogous type of work which attempts to embrace the semiotics of culture. (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 213-214)
Jakobson's tribute to the
Theses of the previous year.
In semiotic research touching upon the question of language, one will have to guard against the imprudent application of thespecial characteristics of language to other semiotic systems. At the same time, one must avoid denying to semiotics the study of systems of signs which have little resemblance to language and following this ostracizing activity to the point of revealing a presumably "non-semiotic" layer in language itself. (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 214)
This is probably a hint to TMS about their study of systems of signs other than language. It is also an odd note of prescription on the imprudence of applying linguistics on other semiotic systems, seeing as he suggested that his communication model (of the verbal communication act) should be applied to other communication systems as well (such as animal communication), despite the fact that it was linguistic to the core. (At this point I DARE anyone to come up with nonverbal equivalents to Jakobson's functions.)
To speak of the "grammar" of an art is not to employ a useless metaphor: the point is that all art implies an organization of polar and significant categories that are based on the opposition of marked and unmarked terms. All art is linked to a set of artistic conventions. Some are general, for example, let us say that we may take the number of coordinates which serve as a basis for plastic arts and create a consequential distinction between a painting and a piece of statuary. Other conventions, influential ones or even mandatory ones for the artist and for the immediate receivers of his work, are imposed by the style of the nation and of the time. The originality of the work finds itself restricted by the artistic code which dominates during a given epoch and in a given society. The artist's revolt, no less than his faithfulness to certain required rules, is conceived of by contemporaries with respect to the code that the innovator wants to shatter. (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 214)
Something for the semiotics of art (I'm going to piece these kinds of discussions together, in the end, to make out the contours of the semiotics of art). I recall that Juri Lotman explicated the marked and unmarked categories in his
Semiotics of Cinema (or
Filmisemiootika).
The attempted confrontation between arts and language may fail if this comparative study relates to ordinary language and not directly to verbal art, which is a transformed system of the former. (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 214)
Notice that verbal art is a
transformation of language, not a
derivative of language.
In the musical art the correspondence of elements that are recognized, in a given convention, as mutually equivalent or in opposition to each other, constitute the principal, if not the only, semiotic value - "intramusical embodied meaning", according to the discription by the musicologist Leonard Meyer:Within the context of a particular musical style one tone or group of tones indicates - leads the practiced listener to expect - that another tone or group of tones will be forthcoming at some more or less specified point in the musical continuum.
The referral to what follows is felt by composers as the essence of the musical sign. In the eyes of Arnold Schönberg, "to compose is to cast a glance upon the theme's future". (Jakobson 1985 [1974]: 216)
It seems that "intramusical embodied meaning" is a synonym for the earlier "introversive semiosis". Note also that the compositon of music is here also oriented to the future.
Jakobson, Roman 1985 [1975]. A Few Remarks on Peirce, Pathfinder in the Science of Language. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 248-253.
When pondering a statement by Peirce, one is constantly surprised. What are the roots of his thought? When another's opinion is quoted and reinterpreted by Peirce, it becomes quite original and innovative. And even when Peirce cites himself, he foten creates a new idea and he never ceases to strike his reader. (Jakobson 1985 [1975]: 248)
This is very true. There is great semantic potential in Peirce's writings. It may be so because he rarely seemed write of anything particular. He was a quite general thinker and it is possible to apply his way of thinking on a lot of phenomena.
I used to say he was so great that no university found a place for him. There was, however, one dramatic exception - the few semesters of Lectureship in Logic at Johns Hopkins - and I am happy to be able to speak on Peirce at the University where he spent five years. (Jakobson 1985 [1975]: 248)
Nice, he corrected this statement. I commented earlier that he was a bit mistaken.
A dual relative term, such as "lover" is a common name signifying a pairt of objects. Every relative has also a converse produced by revelsing theorder of the members of the pair. Thus, the converse of "lover" is "loved".
It is to the same question of duality, which still preoccupies linguists and semioticians, that Peirce returned in 1899 in discussing with William James the dyadic category of action: "This has two aspects, the Active and the Passive, whic hare not merely opposite aspects, but make relative contrasts between different influences of this Category as More Active and More Passive" (8.315). (Jakobson 1985 [1975]: 248)
James was, of course, a notorious Active-ist in this sense. Even his conception of the "self" was active: he spoke of "selfing", because the self is a
doing not a
being (Bayley 1976: 154).
For Peirce, "natural classification takes place by dichotomies" (1.438) and "there is an element of twoness in every set" (1.446). "A dyad consists of two subjects brought into oneness" (1.326), and Peirce defines the present inquiry as "a study of dyads in the necessary forms of signs" (1.444). He sees language in its formal, grammatical structure as a system of "relational dyads". The essential dyadic relation for Peirce is in opposition; he insisted on "the manifest truth that existence lies in opposition" and declares that "a thing without oppositions ipso facto does not exist". According to Peirce, the primary task is to master "the conception of being through opposition" (1.457). (Jakobson 1985 [1975]: 251)
I still think Peirce's inclination towards oppositions should be reviewed in relation with Darwin's principle of antithesis. Perhaps they had a common progenitor or maybe Peirce even got it from reading Darwin (he
did read Darwin).
This model remains valid in its dynamic perspective as well. According to fragments of his Minute Logic, sketched in 1902 but never completed, "To say that the future does not influence the present is untenable doctrine" (2.86). (Jakobson 1985 [1975]: 252)
2.86 isn't available in my version of the
Collected Papers, but at the moment it seems that this may be a key to uniting "futuristic" socio-fantasy with
Culture and Explosion in a creative way.
Thus the mode of being of the symbol is different from that of the icon and from that of the index. An icon has such being as belongs to PAST experience. An index has the being of PRESENT experience. The being of a symbol consists in the real fact that something will be experienced if certain conditions be satisfied [4.447]. - It is a potentiality; and its mode of being is esse in futuro. The FUTURE is potential not actual [2.148]. - The value of an icon consists in its exhibiting the features of a state of things regarded as if it were purely imaginary. The value of an index is that it assures us of positive fact. The value of a symbol is that it serves to make thought and conduct rational and enables us to predict the future [4.448]. (Jakobson 1985 [1975]: 253)
This makes so much sense. For an icon to resemble something one has to know beforehand what it resembles - past experience is necessary. An index can point to or be in the here and now. And symbol, being general, is oriented towards a future, the "law" or "rule" it pertains to is established and further maintained.
Jakobson, Roman 1971 [1954]. Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances. In: Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 239-696.
To study adequately any breakdown in communications we must first understand the nature and structure of the particular mode of communication that has ceased to function. (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 239)
Do we understand nonverbal communication well enough to associate it with specific neurological disorders (e.g. Nonverbal Learning Disorder)?
The application of purely linguistic criteria to the interpretation and classification of aphasic facts can substantially contribute to the science of language and language disturbances, rpvodided that linguists remain as careful and cautious when dealing with psychological and neurological data as they have been in their traditional field. First of all, they should be familiar with the technical terms and devices of the medical disciplines dealing with aphasia; then, they must submit the clinical case reports to thorough linguistic analysis; and, further, they should themselves work with aphasic patients in order to approach the cases directly and not only through a reinterpretation of prepared records which have been quite differently conceived and elaborated. (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 240)
I can only hope that one fine day I'll surpass my own phase of reinterpretation of various theories and literary works and approach actual bodies in actual movement.
Speech implies a selection of certain linguistic entities and their combination into linguistic units of a higher degree of complexitp At the lexical level this is readily apparent: the speaker selects words and combines them into sentences according to the syntactic system of the language he is using; sentences in their turn are combined into utterances. But the speaker is by no means a completely free agent in his choice of words: his selection (except for the rare case of actual neology) must be made from the lexical storehouse whcih he and his addressee possess in common. The communication engineer most properly approaches the essence of the speec hevent when he assumes that in the optimal exchange of information the speaker and the listener have at their disposal more or less the same "filing cabinet of prefabricated representations": the addresseer of a verbal message selects one of these "preconceived possibilities" and the addressee is supposed to make an identical choice from the same assembly of "possibilities already foreseen and provided for". Thus the efficiency of a speech event demands the use of a common code by its participants. (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 241)
Compare this to the "repertory" of sign-behavior in Morris.
Even when other combinations of phonemes are theoretically possible, the speaker, as a rule, is only a word-user, not a word-coiner. When faced with individual words, we expect them to be coded units. In order to grasp the word nylon one must know the meaning assigned to this vocable in the lexical code of modern English. (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 242)
True.
The sentence "it rains" cannot be produced unless the utterer sees that it is actually raining. The deeper the utterance is embedded in the verbal or non-verbalized context, the higher are the chances of its successful performance by the class of patients. (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 245)
It is beginning to seem that "non-verbalized" is Jakobsons circumlocution for "extra-linguistic".
One of the important contributions of symbolic logic to the science of language is its emphasis on the distinction between object language and metalanguage. As Carnap states, "in order to speak about any object language, we need a metalanguage." On these two different levels of language the same linguistic stock may be used; thus we may speak in English (as metalanguage) about English (as object language) and interpret English words and sentences by means of English synonyms, circumlocutions and paraphrases. Obviously such operations, labeled metalinguistic by the logicians, are not their invention: far from being confined to the sphere of science, they prove to be an integral part of our customary linguistic activities. The participants in a dialogue often check whether they are using the same code. "Do you follow me? Do you see what I mean?" the speaker asks, or the listener himself breaks in with "What do you mean?" Then, by replacing the questionable sign with another sign from the same linguistic code, or with a whole group of code signs, the sender of the message seeks to make it more accessible to the decoder. (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 247-248)
An elaboration of the metalinguistic function. He seems to have widened Carnap's contention to everyday speech.
This contexture-deficient aphasia, which could be termed contiguity disorder, diminishes the extent and variety of sentences. The syntactical rules organizing words into higher units are lost; this loss, called agrammatism, causes the degeneration of the sentence into a mere "word heap", to use Jackson's image. Word order becames chaotic; the ties of grammatical coordination and subordination, whether concord or government, are dissolved. As might be expected, words endowed with purely grammatical functions, like conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and articles, disappear first, giving rise to the so-called "telegraphic style", whereas in the case of similarity disorder they are the most resistent. (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 251)
Sounds like a name for Kevin's speech in The Office (US TV show): "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"
In verbal art the interaction of these two elements is especially pronounced. Rich material for the study of this relationship is to be found in verse patterns which require a compulsory parallelism between adjacent lines, for example in Biblical poetry or in the Finnic and, to some extent, the Russian oral traditions. This provides an objective criterion of what in the given speech community acts as a correspondence. Since on any verbal level - morphemic, lexical, syntactic, and phraseological - either of these two relations (similarity and contiguity) can appear - and each in either of two aspects, an impressive range of possible configurations is created. Either of the two gravitational polse may prevail. In Russian lyrical songs, for example, metaphoric constructions predominate, while in the heroic epic the metonymic way is preponderant. (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 255)
In TMS's
Theses, the order is similar, but goes beyond the phraseological level: (1) phoneme level [missing here]; (2) level of phoneme groups (syllables) [morphemic?]; (3) word level [lexical]; (4) syntactict-semantic structure of the sentence [phraseological]; (5) major semantic blocks [missing]; (6) general intention of the text [definitely missing].
In the scene of Anna Karenina's suicide Tolstoj's artistic attention is focused on the heroine's handbag; and in War and Peace the synecdoches "hair on the upper lip" and "bare shoulders" are used by the same writer to stand for the female character to whom these features belong. (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 255-256)
Zamjatin performs something similar. E-330 is designated or hinted at via her eyebrows. Actually, most other characters in that novel are "marked" with some feature of their bodily appearance, e.g. O-90s wrists, etc.
A competition between both devices, metonymic and metaphoric, is manifest in any symbolic process, be it intrapersonal or social. Thus in an inquiry into the structure of dreams, the decisive question is whether the symbols and the temporal sequences used are based on contiguity (Freud's metonymic "displacement" and synechdochic "condensation") or on similarity (Freud's "identification and symbolism"). (Jakobson 1971 [1954]: 258)
Dreams are here an example of intrapersonal symbolic processes.
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