Roman Jakobson: biography of this philologist and linguist

The history of the study of philology and language goes back many years. A prominent 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 see a biography of Roman Jakobson and we will know his contributions to linguistic and literary knowledge. In addition, we will explain in detail what his communication theory consists of, still valid today.

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Biography of Roman Jakobson

Roman Jakobson was a Russian philologist and linguist of Jewish origin, born in Moscow on October 11, 1896, and who died in Boston on July 18, 1982. Roman Jakobson he was a great student of language; he especially studied the difficulties that could appear in him. He was also very interested in literature, poetry, and literary phenomena and techniques, as his career demonstrates 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 leading centers in the literature, the “Moscow Linguistic Circle”, dated 1915, and the “Leningrad Society for the Study of Poetic Language”, from 1917. At the creation of the latter he was only 18 years old.

the beginning

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 prevailed, an intellectual and literary movement born during the First World War, and which consolidates 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 mainly corresponded.

career path

In the 1920s he went to live in Prague, and soon began to work as a professor of Russian philology., specifically in 1923. He also worked as a professor of ancient Czech literature, years later, in 1937; he did it 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 must flee the city because of the Nazi invasion, since he is Jewish. After his escape, Roman Jakobson works as a professor at different universities: specifically, in Uppsala, Oslo and Copenhagen. But in 1941 he must flee again, again due to the Nazi invasion. This time he emigrates to the United States.

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

Construction site

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) and Mayakovsky's unknown verses (1942).

Specifically, the work of this philologist translates into 475 titles; Among them, 374 correspond to books, and 101 to various texts such as poems, prefaces, newspaper articles... his work, but, he has not always done it alone, and that is why many of his works have been created in collaboration with others authors.

Roman Jakobson he not only investigates “adult” language and literature; He also studies children's language. These studies were especially innovative, focusing on the universal role of some types of sounds 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 he passed away 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. Currently the Russian philologist continues to be a figure recognized and remembered for his contributions and his work, especially for the theory of communication, where the elements and functions of language are distinguished, being this very practical and easy to understand. understand.

Communication theory

Within his theoretical contributions, perhaps the most important contribution of Roman Jakobson was that of communication theory, 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 raises his model of the theory of communication; This model focuses on the process of linguistic communication, configured by these 6 language functions.

Comunication elements

Before learning about these functions, we are going to talk about the elements that, according to Jakobson, are necessary for human communication:

1. Transmitter

Is about the person sending the message, who transmits it to his listeners.

2. Receiver

Every communicative act needs a receiver; in this case, it is the person who receives and processes the message that the sender has transmitted, that is, the recipient thereof.

3. Message

The message or messages constitute what the sender is transmitting; that is, it is what is transmitted through communication, and corresponds to an experience, a meaning, an explanation, an idea, 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 that path that allows communication between sender and receiver to take place. That is, the medium that enables the transmission of the message.

• You may be interested in: "The 8 elements of communication: characteristics and examples"

functions

The 6 functions of language that Roman Jakobson proposes 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 context or content oriented. It is typical of narrative, informative texts, etc.

2. emotional

This is oriented to the issuer, understanding this as a subject that expresses emotions, thoughts, sensations...

3. connotative or conative

The conative function is oriented to the receiver (recipient of the message). Generally, what the sender wants is for the receiver to act based on what is being transmitted (that is, that is, it includes your orders, questions, requests...), and this is what corresponds to the function connotative.

4. factual

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

5. metalinguistics

Code oriented; the metalinguistic function allows one to speak of one's own code, that is, to speak of one's own language.

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.

Bibliographic references:

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