Roman Jakobson, the King/God/Supreme Being of 20th-Century Linguistics
Today, I was seized by an overwhelming urge to tell someone about how amazing Roman Jakobson was, and then I remembered that that's what Tumblr is for, so here we go!
As you can see from the title of this post, Roman Jakobson played a hugely important role in the development of the field of structural linguistics in the twentieth century. I mean, he and Nikolai Trubetzkoy basically invented phonology (going off of the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, of course). However, possibly my favorite contribution of his to the world of linguistics is the six functions of language. This idea builds upon Karl Bühler's Organon-Model, but adds three more functions of language to consider (the latter three on this list, in case you were wondering). If you're more of a visual learner, like I am, you might want to follow along with the diagram on the Wikipedia page for the six functions of language. His functions are as follows:
1. The Referential Function - relates to the discussion of Context, like descriptions of a "situation, object, or mental state". For example, this is the function you would use to talk about your course schedule, or what you're having for dinner, or what time it is.
2. The Expressive/Emotive/Affective Function - relates back to the Addresser or Sender of the message. Language falls into this function when it does not change the literal meaning of a message but does tell you something about the internal state of the person conveying the message. Whenever you say "Wow" or "Good golly gosh" (except you probably don't say that second one terribly often), you're using the expressive function.
3. The Conative Function - relates to the Addressee of a message, as with interjections or commands. If someone yells at you to get off of Tumblr and come out of your room because you have company over and are expected to socialize with them like a non-hermit-type-person, they are using the conative function.
4. The Poetic Function - fairly self-explanatory. This function wants you to focus on "the message for its own sake." When you want the actual words you use to draw attention to themselves as words, you're using the poetic function. This happens when you write poems (WOW WHAT A SHOCK I NEVER WOULD HAVE EXPECTED THAT) but also when you write slogans: you want the specific words used to stick in your listener's head.
5. The Phatic Function - relates to the Contact/Channel aspect of language, meaning this language is all about interaction. When you greet someone, bid them farewell, or even when you "um" and "uh" your way through a conversation, you are using the phatic function. It's the linguistic equivalent of doing a mic check. (Also, funnily enough, you will often file discussion of the weather under this function, instead of under the referential function, as you might expect. That's because the weather is a common-ground topic you can use to establish a connection with basically anyone. I'm looking at you, English people. Don't try to deny it.)
6. The Metalingual/Metalinguistic/Reflexive Function - this is when you use language to talk about language. If you're looking for an example of this, look no further than the six items on this list!
All of these functions are pretty cool all by themselves, but what makes them especially interesting is that they have transcended the world of linguistics and entered into the larger world of cultural theory. Jakobson's ideas were a huge influence on people like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, who took the six functions of language and applied them to culture as a whole. If you think people sound pretentious whenever they talk about how "meta" a TV show or movie is, you can blame Roland Barthes and, by extension, Roman Jakobson. (Except maybe don't, because they're both pretty awesome critical minds. Also, they are both dead, so it won't matter to them anyway.)
So, yeah. TL;DR: Roman Jakobson is an awesome 20th-century linguist who gave us a cool way of talking about how language works and then, by extension, a cool way of talking about how culture and media work. He is the BOSS of 20th-century linguistics.
(But Noam Chomsky is pretty cool, too. FUN FACT: Noam Chomsky gave a talk or was on a panel or something at Brown a little over a year ago, but I didn't find out about it until after it had already happened. This failure will haunt me for the rest of my days.)
