Roman Jakobson attempts to establish the importance poetics plays in linguistics in “From Linguistics and Poetics.” Poetics on a basic level involves how messages become  art. The separation, that Jakobson claims exists, is to him nonsensical. Poetics involves verbal structure and linguistics is the very science of verbal structure and thus “poetics may be regarded as an integral part of linguistics”(1145). He also gives examples of how poetry has been transformed into other modes of art and uses this as a way to prove that aspects of poetry make it viable in studying linguistics but also semiotics. The only circumstance when removing poetics from linguistics is appropriate is when examining grammar alone. Language must be studied for all of its functions and to only study language an  messages from the view of the information it gives us “arbitrarily reduces the informational capacity of messages (1148).”

To further establish the centrality of poetics in language he divs deeper into how verbal communication works. He explains both the factors present in all verbal communication and the functions  of this communication including a poetic function which is the “dominant, determining function” of verbal art. The factors of verbal communication are: addresser(1) who gives a message(2) to the addressee(3). The message involves a certain context(4), the who, when, what, or where. The message involves some form of contact(5), made through a specific channel with a given code(6) understood by both the addressee and addresser, usually the language. These factors are intricately connected to the functions of verbal language and can not be removed from verbal communication. Diversity within verbal communication is rooted in the hierarchy, meaning the emphasis or focus, of the functions in a given statement. In these instances the other functions become accessory to the dominant function. The emotive function focuses on the addresser and their emotional state. An example where emotive function would be dominant is when the addresser expresses pain with “Ouch!” In the conative function, the addressee is the focus and this function involves giving a command to the addressee. Referential function involves the context, the phatic function pertains to maintaining and creating contact between the addressee and addresser. Metalingual function deals with understanding the code and poetic function is dominant when the message in verbal communication calls the most attention. Understanding the variety of ways language is used gives better context of the importance of the poetics. For Jakobson, poetic function plays a crucial part in further separating signs from their objects in verbal communication which is a major part of linguistics. So, to limit the poetic function to poetry is “delusive oversimplification.”(1150).

In his essay, “Course in General Linguistics”, Ferdinand de Saussure describes the foundation of semiotics as the relationship between the “signifier” and the “signified”. He compares the dynamic of language itself to that of a sheet of paper: “thought is the front and the sound the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time; likewise in language, one can neither divide sound from thought nor thought from sound” (857). To provide context, the signifier represents what Saussure coins the “sound-image”, an interpretation of a concept (written-word). By contrast, the signified is the concept itself (the actual object itself) that the signifier illustrates through language. According to Saussure, the combination of thought and sound results in a “form” (857), meaning that without the thought, the sound loses its meaning in language (and vice-versa). As a result, the form would be lost.

Likewise, in the relationship between the signifier and signified, without one the other is lost. To give an example of this dynamic, take the term “apple” and the red-skinned fruit that the term represents. The signified is the red-skinned fruit, while “apple” is the signifier. Without the term “apple”, the red-skinned fruit would be nameless, without any connotation. As Saussure states, the signifier is “the psychological imprint…the impression that it makes on our senses” (853). Without any term to express it through language, the red-skinned fruit ceases to have any sort of meaning. This also applies in the case of the lack of red-skinned fruit that the term “apple” would have been linked to in semiotics. Without the object or concept, the term itself loses meaning. In other words, the concept/object and the sound-image are only important when linked together to create a sign that designates both sides of the combination (Saussure, 853).

The idea of langue (French for “language), as Saussure puts it, is arguably critical towards the relationship between the signifier and signified. Saussure states that langue is, “homogenous…a system of signs in which the only essential thing is the union of meanings and sound-images, in which both parts of the sign are psychological” (850). Essentially, the sound-image itself isn’t impactful, but rather the psychological mark it leaves when carrying an idea. In order to register that mark, one would need to understand the language that a particular image belongs to. By that rule of langue, one understands the relationship between signifier and signified as per “contract”; if a mono-lingual English-speaker overhears a conversation between two Chinese people discussing about an apple in their native tongue, he/she will not understand the sound-image of “apple” in Chinese. As a result, the concept of the apple (the object itself) referenced in the Chinese-spoken conversation does not register with the English-speaker, since the signified and signifier are linked. Essentially, in relation to langue, my theory is that having the signifier and signified locked inseparably is only half of the way to understanding concepts through language (or semiotics for that matter). Not only does a concept need a sound-image to make said concept existent, but also one needs to be part of the contract set by langue in order to understand the sound-image, and link it to the concept it represents.

In his essay “On Truth and Lying In a Moral Sense” Nietzsche states that language, specifically words, is what we use to express the mental images we receive from stimulus for the environment; they are not representations of the thing-in-itself (766-7). With this concept in mind, I would like to refer to Ferdinand de Saussure who narrowed down my previously mentioned concept to just the structure of language itself in his book: Course In General Linguistics.Saussure states explains a language is a system of signs. Signs are composed by comcept and sound-images. More importantly, he emphasizes that the relationship between this concept and sound-images is arbitrary and linear in principles I and II of linguistics.

One of Saussure’s most important point is that language is not a naming system but a relation between concept and sound-image. Language is a system of sign divided into signifier and signified. The signifier is the sound-image we express; it is like the material form of language such as word either spoken or written. The signified is the concept; the thought and idea behind the signifier. There is no concept or thought without words, just a “uncharted nebula” (Saussure 256). At the same time, words without thought are just meaningless noise (Saussure 256). What Saussure is trying to tell us with this is that neither concept nor words can exist without the other. They are like two sides of a coin: they are both created at the same time; they exist together and you cannot separate them. But this ideas and definitions are just the introduction; he then starts talking about the principle I of linguistics and things get very interesting.

Saussure then states that the relation between signified and signifier is arbitrary.  He says that the “linguistics sign is  arbitrary” because there is no rule that links a signified with a specific signifier (Saussure 854). That is to say, the bond between a signified and a signifier is randomly established by the community that speaks a language. Using Saussage example, we can notice that here is no specific signifier for the idea of “sister” (854). All languages have a different word and sound for the same concept and the selection of signifier among language is arbitrary.  Another example is when a Chinese man had to bow nine times to salute his emperor. the signifier has no natural connection to the concept. They were just bonded randomly, and therefore, became a sign in the chinese languange.

But this ideas is not only for signifiers, it also applies for the signified. Let’s consider the word “nigger:” historically, this term was used to refer to African Slaves and it was considered an offense. But nowadays, it refers to friends and acquaintances of African descendancy and it is considered a sign of friendship. This example also support the principle of the arbitrary nature of  signs. Even though the signifier is the same, the signified has changed because there is no rule or natural connection between both elements; their bond is arbitrary and the signified can simply change as the society evolves.

Besides the arbitrariness of signs, Saussure talks about the linear nature of signs. This principle may sound complex, but it is actually very simple. Unlike visual signifiers, which can convey many ideas simultaneously, auditory signifiers, such as syllables and words, can only express one message in succession (Saussure 855). In other words, there is a line draw by time in which the elements appear one after the other. To make this clear, let’s use a typewriter as an example. This sound-image or signifiers is connected to the concept of a machine that help us type letters faster with a nice typography. But we understand this sign only when we read or listen the syllables and the two words in the order they are one after another. That is to say, we understand the sign when we hear the signifiers one after another in the form of a line “in the dimension of time.”

I have to say that Saussure broke down each of the elements of language to the most possible to have a better understanding of language itself. His ideology of words as a system of signs, that can be broken into signified and signifiers with several principles, enlighten us about human psychology.

Jakobson interprets the bridge between poetics and linguistics in his theory. Exactly what makes a verbal communication poetic? Poetics analyze a works ability to communicate a verbal message into art. The link between poetics and linguistics is bridged between the way they are reliant on the way a word is taken, used and the context of such a word. Even the structure is crucial.

Semiotics are crucial to such an evaluation because of its ability or point to analyze signs and symbols in their interpretation. Linguistics is reliant on interpretations of communication. Much like Nietzsche had theorized, the languages we use come from the words that we derive from the symbols and signs we associate them with as an individual.

The way it becomes different is the way this chain of communication goes. The communicator to the communicated, the subject and specific words used to communicate are all carefully chosen to prove a specific point. Jakobson touches upon poetics by expressing how carefully words can be used in order to be poetic instead of linguistic. Even though one is related to each other, it is important to know they are not one in the same. To Jakobson, linguistics is a more ‘casual’ verbal structure, whereas poetics are a designed structure. The way this more carefully designed language becomes entwined with semiotics is the way the symbol or subject of the communicated is metaphorically referred to. The metaphor becomes the symbol and they take on the same meaning or subject. This ability to design a verbal structure without coming out right and using the actual name or the ‘black and white’ or usual/realistic term, explanation, description, etc is what poetic analysis is all about.

Jakobson also picks apart language from two different sides. One side being object language and the other being metalanguage. Object language is speaking of objects while metalanguage is speaking of language, or the kind of unspoken rules and ways of verbally communicating. Most commonly, metalanguage helps us to identify whether the person were communicating to uses the same words, expressions, or follow the same type of verbal expression as ourselves.

This is a considerable insight into the idea of how we communicate. We don’t always realize how we speak to each other, and how the way we speak is reliant on who we are talking to, as well as how we respond when spoken to in different ways. When spoken to in different tones or dialects, we respond accordingly or the communication is lost, or literally lost in translation.

Metalanguage works into poetic analysis because metalanguage effects the way we interprete or understand what is being communicated. It is because of this that the message can be deciphered, many times in different ways varying upon individuals. Focusing on the message itself is a poetic function, but how we decipher the message has everything to do with metalanguage.

Jakobson focuses on poetics and how really no specific field of linguistics can be deciphered or anaylsized just based off of one field alone, in fact it takes many because of the way people are programmed to communicate and process communication/messages.

Defining poetry isn’t very simple. It’s a form of communication but it’s also art. It isn’t very easy to understand either. Poetry is abstract, and it doesn’t follow the rules of language very strictly. A poet plays around with the order of words, as well as the structure of a sentence. Jakobson says on page 1145, “poetics deals with problems of verbal structure, just as the analysis of painting is concerned with pictorial structure. Since linguistics is the global science of verbal structure, poetics may be regarded as an integral part of linguistics.” What Jakobson is saying here is that because linguistics is the global system for verbal structure, poetics is an internal part of it. Poetics isn’t completely different than linguistics, and so it’s still a part of it especially since we use poetry on a daily basis in our conversations. So many times we’ll use metaphors and similes which fall under poetry. As Jakobson shows there are six basic functions in our verbal communication and “poetic” is one of them.

In conclusion, poetry is different than everyday conversations, however it’s still part of our daily use. We use it to to select the right word or noun to say. It’s a means of communication.

Is Roland Barthes on the writing “The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies” a mad man or a genius? Well there are many aspects of his argument that seems a bit obscure yet clear at the same time, well my own contradiction which  is what I viewed as part of his point, the paradox us humans deal with when it concerns to symbolism, object, dreams, and view in particular. The first part of his writing conveys to the reader how he and Maupassant view the Eiffel tower. He and his friend says the Eiffel Tower is literally nothing! It is just an object or a monument of nothing! So as I read the passage he brings up many different ways people think about the Eiffel tower. He even brings up a bunch of science and says we are empiricists. In addition, not only that we learn my experience and observation, but we also have a major goal in mind. To use learning structures to make sense of what we see when we look from the peak of the Eiffel Tower. He even states that there is a word for this kind of learning. That word is decipherment. We decipher or at least try to decipher every vegetable strata on the location we view things. Then he also claims that the monument is useless. What intrigues me about the writing is when he says that we create meaning to an object that’s purpose was just to satisfy Eiffel’s dream along with the artist’s petition. This dream which he speaks of is what there idea was to ascendant power at there time. Also a dream to be able to be as big as the tower itself. This shows that the tower was created with aspirations that it’s meaning would be to be capable of constructing a monument that embodies power. He then uses an example that is similar to the sun tower that another individual wanted to create. The problem was what it took to make the sun tower especially since it would involve masonry. That is a very tedious task which will require a lifetime of work to get accomplished. So this goes to show that dreams of power and ideology comes hand to hand when it comes to crafting these constructs of art. Another story which seems to bring about the essence of his point with with the tower of Babel. Babel is a tower that people wanted to create to reach heaven and communicate with god, but instead god deceived them to prevent them from creating the tower. To conclude my post Roland Barthes to me is a genius even if he says the Eiffel tower is a useless monument because he makes a point that we use our imagination to make meaning towards the tower.

For Ferdinand de Saussure, linguistics is the study of language (langue), which he discerns from speech (parole). Language is a code, allowing you to communicate intelligibly provided you prescribe to a socially bound meaning—a contract if you will. On the other hand, speech is the ability to create endless, original streams of language, organized such as to give coherence to the code (856-857). In the confines of the excerpt, Saussure deals only with the metaphysical origins of language, delineating linguistics, as well as his minted field of semiotics.

To begin, Saussure asserts that language is only comprehensible as a sign, in the abstract sense. Broken into its components, language is composed of a sound-image, and its correlated concept; however, in the spirit of semiotics, Saussure abstracts these to a signifier and a signified, respectively.  The two entities are intimately linked, analogous, in his words, to the two sides of a sheet of paper: they are inseparable yet distinct (858).

At this point, it should be noted that the tangible object is impertinent to Saussure’s argument of language. He assumes a Nietzschean perspective that is dismissive of the Ding an sich. Language deals not with the physical entity, but with the concepts we form surrounding our perception of that entity.

Thus, language is an indivisible whole, a coupling of signifier and signified that emerges from the primordial mass of shapeless thoughts extant in the conscious (856). For one part to exist without the other would infer an objective existence (860). In such a scenario, the concept of chair would be matched with its appropriate signifier, CHer, one having existed before the other. However, in his Nietzschean frame, Saussure does not accept the independent existence of either part. Rather, as the object is apprehended, it is identified by its proper signifier; if the conceived object lacks a signifier, the object is identified by its relation to another signifier. For example, Columbus, after sailing the ocean blue, could only speak of the birds and faunae in terms of his European knowledge. A new concept, having been identified via a tangential connection to another, familiar concept, will become distinct through cognition of it to the point that it incarnates its proper signifier (862). This new concept begins its existence concurrent to its signifier, prior to which it had existed as whichever familiar concept, prior to which it had not yet formulated an existence in our consciousness. Operating within the assumption that there can be no thought without language, Saussure contends that definition is achieved through negation (863-865). In other words, the concept of chair is not that of a rock, nor a sofa, nor a table, neither can it be anything else that you sit on. Similarly, the concept of a sofa is not that of a chair, and so on and so forth. Although it is through negation that concepts are defined, once signified, they become positive terms defined by what they are. In sum, language is a form rather than a substance (865). As such, it must be studied as a humanity, not as a taxonomy.

In Saussure’s essay he enlightens us by explaining that language only consists of differences.”In language there are only differences. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system”(862) In this quote Saussure is saying before we had a linguistic system there wasn’t any way to tell things apart because we had no meaning for it. We are unable to give a sign to the signified without already having a working linguistic system in place. After we come to an agreement with the contract we sign when we learn a language, and its rules, we are able to use this system to arbitrarily give concepts and phonics a meaning by giving it a sign. After having a linguistic system, we are able to differentiate the signified and signifier by knowing what they are not, and give them a sign. For example we know the sex of a human because of the genitalia of the human being. We know the sex of the person as a female because they do not possess male genitalia or vice versa. After making a linguistic system we figure out what the concept and phonic differences are by looking at other concepts and seeing that they don’t possess the same traits as them.After we come to this realization ,we are able to differentiate a male from a female and give it a sign. When looking at a cow or a dog we know what it is based upon what we know it isn’t. A cow is large and makes moo’s sounds. A dog is small and barks. This is how we know a dog isn’t a cow by the different traits these both possess. If we gave them both the same sign we wouldn’t have any way to tell the difference in our linguistic system.

Saussure goes on to explain that until we have a sign for a signified, and signifer they will always be negative. “But the statement that everything in language is negative is true only if the signified and the signifier are considered separately; when we consider the sign in it’s totality, we have something that is positive in it’s own class.”(862) When looking at language as only differences we see how negative it really is. In order to see the differences we have to think about what the concept isn’t to define what it is. Saussure is saying that when we bring the signified and the signified together we have a new meaning in the system. After finding the differences of traits from a male and a female, we are able to give it a sign. When we give the idea a sign it is no longer negative because it has a new meaning when the concept and sound are put together. When we say the word male we don’t immediately look for the negative differences between it and other words. Instead we identify each words meanings in a positive way in order to have a functional linguistic system.

I mentioned in class that Barthes once claimed, in an interview, that reading Jakobson was such fun that it belonged at his bedside, like all ecstatic and irresponsible activities in his life.  In that spirit, more or less, try this exercise taken from a longer article by Louis Hébert at the U of Quebec:

Which functions of language are activated in the following text?

This text you gave me to correct is a bunch of rubbish! Listen to this, you’ve got several verbs with no subject, you state the obvious (“a day lasts 24 hours”!), then – are you still following me? – you use obscure metaphors (“work is the drop hammer of life”) and stupid malapropisms (“You are the suntan of my life”).