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Roman Jakobson, Parallelism, and Structural Poetics

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Roman Jakobson, Parallelism, and Structural Poetics Chapter 2 Roman Jakobson, Parallelism, and Structural Poetics In the early to mid-twentieth century these very issues regarding the conver- gence of poetics, style, language, and discourse structure were being exten- sively explored by eastern European literary theorists.1 The discipline that eventually emerged from the movement became variously known as, “critical theory, semiotics, structuralism, literary linguistics, cultural studies,”2 and one could add “structural poetics.” The movement was also in many ways a pre- cursor to DA. Structural poetics pioneered the analysis of literature, namely poetry, as discursive linguistic communicative function, or to use their termi- nology, a “semiotic system.” Saussurean structural linguistics functioned as the theoretical bedrock for evaluating literary texts as discourse. It is to Saussure’s theory of language that we now turn. 2.1 Structuralism, Structural Semiotics, Linguistics, and Discursivity French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure innovatively conceptualised language (Fr. langue) as an integrated and organised system of signs (i.e., semiotic sys- tem) whose various parts, or constituents (i.e., signs or signifiers), are only properly understood as a part of the greater structural (i.e., semiotic) system. Saussure conceived of gross constituent units, or “constituents” for short, as ar- bitrary signifiers (signs) that point to something meaningful (signified). There is a distinction, then, between the signified (meaning) and the signifier (form). The sign, or signifier, is the form that that which is meaningful (i.e., signified) takes within the system of forms. Implicit to this concept of the signifier and the signified is the idea that signification is activated precisely through the sign’s place within the greater 1 This movement is most directly associated with various schools of literary linguistic theory including New Criticism, Russian Formalism (or simply “formalism”), the Prague School, Structuralism, and Czech Structuralism. These groups were made up primarily of both lin- guistics and literary theorists. Structural poetics is also considered to be the precursor of the discipline known today as stylistics. 2 Richard Bradford, Roman Jakobson: Life, Language, and Art (Critics of the Twentieth Century (ed. Christopher Norris; NY: Routledge, 1994), 215 of 340 Kindle Edition. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004366275_004 20 Chapter 2 semiotic system. This means that a sign can only have meaning as a member of the larger semiotic system in which the sign is housed. In other words, a form has no meaning when isolated, or cut off from the larger system. More precisely still, signification is activated only through the sign’s reciprocal rela- tionship with other signs; hence the importance of binarism within Saussurean structuralism; namely, the reciprocal determination of signs within a system. Saussure also emphasised the importance of the negative relationship be- tween signs; that all signs within the semiotic system are determined by their negative relationship with other signs within the system. In other words, con- stituents are identified according to the way in which they are not like other signs. It follows, once again, that there is no meaning outside of the semiotic system. Meaning results as the sum total of the various constituents working in coordination within the matrix of the semiotic system to convey meaning at all linguistic levels. Meaning occurs, then, when signs are placed in organised and governed relationship with other constituents. Saussure clarifies this concept by drawing on social activity as the necessary framework for linguistic systems. He says, A son tour, l’arbitraire du signe nous fait mieux comprendre pourquoi le fait social peut seul créer un système linguistique. La collectivité est nécessaire pour établir des valeurs dont l’unique raison d’être est dans l’usage et le consentement générale; l’individu à lui seul est incapable d’en fixer aucune.3 Saussure builds on this to argue that the communicative function (what he calls parole), which is distinct from the meta-system (what he calls langue), is the result of selecting constituents with semantic value from a database and combining them in sequences. This results in the formation of syntactic rela- tionships between signs that form structure, or clusters, that are organised to create a meaningful message. In other words, each word has meaning, each phrase, each S, each paragraph, each chapter, etc.; and at each of those levels the meaning conveyed by the given constituent is derived from its relation- ship with corresponding constituents against the backdrop of the utterance. Discourse is thereby conceived as a single semantic structure, or semiotic system, that is made up of various organised and governed linguistic structures, or lay- ers. It is precisely the premise of structural linguistics that all constituents are 3 Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (Publié par Charles Bailly et Albert Séchehaye avec la collaboration de Albert Riedlinger; édition critique préparée par Tullio de Mauro; Postface de Louis-Jean Calvet; Paris: Grand Bibliotèque Payot, 1967), 157..
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