Roman Jakobson: biography of this philologist and linguist.

This Russian researcher is best known for studying the elements that make up communication.

The history of the study of philology and language goes back many years. A leading figure in this field of knowledge was the Russian Roman Jakobson, philologist and linguist, and author of the theory of communication, where he establishes the 6 functions of language.

In this article we will briefly look at a biography of Roman Jakobson and we will learn about his contributions to linguistic and literary knowledge. In addition, we will explain in detail what his theory of communication consists of, which is still valid today.

Biography of Roman Jakobson

Roman Jakobson was a Russian philologist and linguist of Jewish origin, born in Moscow on October 11, 1896, who died in Boston on July 18, 1982. Roman Jakobson was a great scholar of language; he especially studied the difficulties that could appear in it.. He was also very interested in literature, poetry and literary phenomena and techniques, as shown by his career and as we will see throughout the article.

From a very young age he was interested in poetry, and that is why he was involved in the creation of two centers of reference in literature, the "Moscow Linguistic Circle", dated 1915, and the "Society for the Study of Poetic Language of Leningrad", from 1917. At the creation of the latter he was only 18 years old.

Beginnings

It was in Moscow that Roman Jakobson began to study oriental languages, at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages. Subsequently, he entered Moscow University and enrolled in the Faculty of Philology and History.

At that time, Russian Formalism, an intellectual and literary movement born during the First World War, prevailed. born during the First World War, which consolidated the independence of literary theory and literary criticism as autonomous disciplines.

Jakobson had a relationship with Nikolai Trubetskoi, another important Russian linguist and phonologist, with whom he corresponded.

Professional career

In the 1920s he went to live in Prague, and soon began to work as a professor of Russian philology, specifically in 1923.in 1923. He also worked as a professor of Old Czech literature, years later, in 1937, in Brno, a city in the Czech Republic.

He was researching in the field of philology, poetry, creation and language, and published his results in a series of installments: "The New Russian Poetry" (1921) and "On Czech verse, with particular reference to Russian verse" (1923).

In 1930 Roman Jakobson defended his doctoral thesis in Prague. However, 9 years later, in 1939, he had to flee the city because of the Nazi invasion, as he was Jewish. After his flight, Roman Jakobson works in different universities as a professor: specifically, in Uppsala, Oslo and Copenhagen. But in 1941 he had to flee again, again because of the Nazi invasion. This time he emigrates to the United States..

Once there, he teaches at Harvard, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It is in the USA where Jakobson focuses especially on the field of linguistics, as opposed to the previous years, which were more poetic and centered on literary theory.

Work

Roman Jakobson's career focused on the study of different literary phenomena. Other of his works that reflect this are: Observations on the Prose of the Poet Pasternak (1935) y Maiakovski's Unknown Verses (1942).

Concretely, the work of this philologist is translated into 475 titles; among them, 374 correspond to books, and 101 to various texts such as poems, prefaces, journalistic articles... His work, however, has not always been carried out alone, and that is why many of his works have been created in collaboration with other authors.

Roman Jakobson not only researches on the language and literature "of adults"; he also studies the language of children.. These studies were particularly innovative, and focused on the universal role of some types of sound in children's language.

On the other hand, he also studied aphasias (language disorders); specifically, the linguistic alterations that occur in them.

Death and legacy

Jakobson died in Boston on July 18, 1982, at the age of 85. and after spending his life immersed and researching in the field of linguistics and literature.

Roman Jakobson's work was distributed in many countries, including France and Spain. Today the Russian philologist is still a recognized and remembered figure for his contributions and his work, especially for the theory of communication, where the elements and functions of language are distinguished, being very practical and easy to understand.

Theory of communication

Within his theoretical contributions, perhaps the most important contribution of Roman Jakobson was that of the theory of communication, present in his work Closing statements: Linguistics and Poetics (1958). In it, he presented what were, according to him, the 6 functions of language. In this work Jakobson presents his model of the theory of communication; this model focuses on the process of linguistic communication, configured by these 6 functions of language.

Elements of communication

Before knowing these functions, let's talk about the elements that, according to Jakobson, are necessary for human communication:

1. Sender

This is the person who emits the messageThe sender is the person who transmits the message to his listeners.

2. Receiver

Every communicative act needs a receiver; in this case, the receiver is the person who receives and processes the message transmitted by the sender, i.e. the addressee of the message.

3. Message

The message or messages constitute that which the sender is transmitting; that is, it is what is transmitted through the communication, and corresponds to an experience, a meaning, an explanation, an idea, etc., etc., etc.etc.

4. Code

The code, according to Roman Jakobson, are the rules that, combined, form the message; that is to say, corresponds to the type of language used.

5. Channel

Finally, the channel is the channel that allows communication to take place between sender and receiver. In other words, it is the medium that enables the transmission of the message.

Functions

The 6 functions of language proposed by Roman Jakobson in his theory of communication are the following (each one is focused or oriented on an element of the communicative process):

1. referential

The referential function is oriented to the context or content. It is typical of narrative, informative, etc. texts.

2. Emotive

This is oriented to the sender, who is understood as a subject that expresses emotions, thoughts, sensations, etc. a subject that expresses emotions, thoughts, sensations, etc....

3. Connotative or conative

The conative function is oriented to the receiver (recipient of the message). Generally, what the sender wants is that the receiver acts according to what he is transmitting (i.e. includes his orders, questions, requests...), and this is what corresponds to the connotative function.

4. Factual

This function is centered on the contact or the channel; it encompasses the resources that make it possible to establish and maintain the communicative interaction..

5. Metalinguistic

Code-oriented; the metalinguistic function makes it possible to talk about the code itself, that is, to talk about the language itself.

6. Poetics

The last function of language proposed by Roman Jakobson focuses on the message itself. The poetic function appears when the transmission of the message is intended to produce a special effect on the receiver, be it emotion, joy, euphoria, etc.

Bibliographical references:

• Cadenas, H. (2012). The system of structure. Structuralism and social systems theory. Cinta moebio, 45: 204-214.
• Holenstein, E. (1975). Roman Jakobson's Approach to Language: Phenomenological Structuralism. Bloomington & London Indiana Univ. Press.
• Jakobson, R. (1977). Echoes of His Scholarship. Eds. Daniel Armstrong, Cornelis H. van Schooneveld.