Talking to a friend // Roman Jakobson and phenomenology
There are a lot of things I've wanted to tell you all over the past week, but I've been distracted by a lot of things. I think am less dense than the water above me; I keep buoying up higher.
Whitney Wood came up to the City yesterday. What happens when Whitney and I hang out is that we find each other at the appointed meeting place, we embrace, and then we immediately lock ourselves into discussion. This time, it started out on the topic of Fodor's recent guest lectures at the university where Whitney does linguistic research. Actually material and logistic challenges like where and what to eat, whether he or I wants ice with his drink, and so on, are handled in an a kind of tight parenthetic frame, a conversational object produced and dealt with and dissolved as quickly as possible. I think at some point we agreed to call it a night, and he retired to the couch. This morning, my first words were something like, "Is verb nominalization universal to all languages?" "Yes," he said. And it begins again.
Something interesting about that sort of conversation: in the lived experience, one is literally not listening to words. The sequence of grunts and hisses (or, in text, the dots and scratches) are submerged, subjectively speaking, under the weight of the the actual content of the dialog--the objects referred to, the emotional states conveyed, etc.
I find it illuminating to think of this in terms of Roman Jakobson's communicative model. I'm not really sure how to present this theory succinctly, so I'm going to experiment a little. This is meant to be read in the following order [brown text, gray text, tan text]) The text is all Jakobson's:
"Each of these six factors determines a different function of language. Although we distinguish six basic aspects of language, we could, however, hardly find verbal messages that would fulfill only one function. The diversity lies not in a monopoly of some one of these several functions but in a different hierarchical order of functions. The verbal structure of a message depends primarily on the predominant function."
context
"To be operative the message requires a CONTEXT referred to (‘referent’ in another, somewhat ambiguous, nomenclature), seizable by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized..."referential
But even though a set (Einstellung) toward the referent, an orientation toward the CONTEXT -- briefly the so-called REFERENTIAL, ‘denotative,’ ‘cognitive’ function -- is the leading task of numerous messages, the accessory participation of the other functions in such messages must be taken into account by the observant linguist.
addresser
"The ADDRESSER sends..."emotive
The so-called EMOTIVE or ‘expressive’ function, focused on the ADDRESSER, aims a direct expression of the speaker’s attitude toward what he is speaking about. It tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion whether true or feigned; therefore, the term ‘emotive,’ launched and advocated by Marty has proved to be preferable to ‘emotional.’ The purely emotive stratum in language is presented by the interjections. They differ from the means of referential language both by their sound pattern (peculiar sound sequences or even sounds elsewhere unusual) and by their syntactic role (they are not components but equivalents of sentences). ‘Tut! Tut! said McGinty’: the complete utterance of Conan Doyle’s character consists of two suction clicks.
message
"...a MESSAGE to..."poetic
*
addressee
"...the ADDRESSEE."conative
"Orientation toward the ADDRESSEE, the CONATIVE function, finds its purest grammatical expression in the vocative and imperative, which syntactically, morphologically, and often even phonemically deviate from other nominal and verbal categories. The imperative sentences cardinally differ from declarative sentences: the latter are and the former are not liable to a truth test."
channel
"...a CONTACT, a physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication"phatic
"There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works (‘Hello, do you hear me?’), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm his continued attention (‘Are you listening?’ or in Shakespearean diction, ‘Lend me your ears!’ -- and on the other end of the wire ‘Urn-hum!’). This set for CONTACT, or in Malinowski’s terms PHATIC function, may be displayed.by a profuse exchange of ritualized formulas, by entire dialogues with the mere purport of prolonging communication."
code
"...[and]a CODE fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and addressee (or in other words, to the encoder and decoder of the message)"metalingual
Whenever the addresser and/or the addressee need to check up whether they use the same code, speech is focused on the CODE: it performs a METALINGUAL (i.e., glossing) function. ‘I don’t follow you - what do you mean?’ asks the addressee, or in Shakespearean diction, ‘What is’t thou say’st?’
*"We have brought up all the six factors involved in verbal communication except the message itself. The set (Einstellung) toward the MESSAGE as such, focus on the message for its own sake, is the POETIC function of language. This function cannot be productively studied out of touch with the general problems of language, and, on the other hand, the scrutiny of language requires a thorough consideration of its poetic function."
Wow. That took a lot longer to make than I thought. And every time I had to use a deprecated HTML a puppy died. Hmmm.
Anyway, what I'm trying to talk about it the phenomenology of these different functions. Suppose we take a page out of a phenomenologist like Merleau-Ponty's book and run with something like this:
"The sense of the gesture is not given, but understood, that is, recaptured by an act on the spectator's part.... The communication or comprehension of gestures comes about through the reciprocity of my intentions and the gestures of others, of my gestures and intentions discernible in the conduct of other people. It is as if the other person's intentions inhabited my body and mine his."
Jakobson's model of communication is posited in the third-person voice. But we should be comfortable a this point with the idea of the compatibility of first-person and third-person accounts and the project of identifying the parts of one with parts of another. And though we should probably be cautious here, there is a clear affinity between the 'gesture' of M-P's first person description and the 'message' of Jakobson's model, the 'comprehender' and the 'addressee', and so on. If we keep thinking in this way, then it becomes clear that the Jakobson's 'context'--which I think is a stupid name, by the way--is the object of the intention of which is inhabited by both the gesturer and the one who understands the gesture.
So we would expect that when the referential function of communication dominates, the message (and the code, and the channel) itself hardly enters consciousness. One isn't paying attention to the message in these cases; one is fixated on the content (even when that content is not present or even an 'object' in the standard sense at all). And so on with the emotive and conative functions--although here the object of the intention is the addresser or addressee (?? -- I could see telling this story getting really complicated. If I use the imperative voice to say to you "Kick the ball!" then perhaps I am attempting to instill in you an intention towards the ball that reveals its potential to be kicked by you.)
So where was I? I wanted to bring all this up, not just to be pedantic, but to point out what happens when you are in conversation with a close and trusted friend whom you haven't seen for a while. What happens is that the code is so shared, and the channel so robust since it is glued in place by that the intensity of the friendship at that moment (there is nothing that would cause one's mind to deviate, for example), that one's attention is never removed from the content of the discussion in order to establish some kind of metalingual or phatic repair. And unless one is actively engaging in poetry or wordplay (we were not), then there was no reason for us to perceive any of the words we exchanged.
I think that wound up being long-winded. Ironically, I meant to move off this topic to the actual contents of the conversation, which was really interesting. But I seem to have spent a couple hours already talking about the act of communication itself. Another time, I guess.
Whitney Wood came up to the City yesterday. What happens when Whitney and I hang out is that we find each other at the appointed meeting place, we embrace, and then we immediately lock ourselves into discussion. This time, it started out on the topic of Fodor's recent guest lectures at the university where Whitney does linguistic research. Actually material and logistic challenges like where and what to eat, whether he or I wants ice with his drink, and so on, are handled in an a kind of tight parenthetic frame, a conversational object produced and dealt with and dissolved as quickly as possible. I think at some point we agreed to call it a night, and he retired to the couch. This morning, my first words were something like, "Is verb nominalization universal to all languages?" "Yes," he said. And it begins again.
Something interesting about that sort of conversation: in the lived experience, one is literally not listening to words. The sequence of grunts and hisses (or, in text, the dots and scratches) are submerged, subjectively speaking, under the weight of the the actual content of the dialog--the objects referred to, the emotional states conveyed, etc.
I find it illuminating to think of this in terms of Roman Jakobson's communicative model. I'm not really sure how to present this theory succinctly, so I'm going to experiment a little. This is meant to be read in the following order [brown text, gray text, tan text]) The text is all Jakobson's:
"Each of these six factors determines a different function of language. Although we distinguish six basic aspects of language, we could, however, hardly find verbal messages that would fulfill only one function. The diversity lies not in a monopoly of some one of these several functions but in a different hierarchical order of functions. The verbal structure of a message depends primarily on the predominant function."
context
"To be operative the message requires a CONTEXT referred to (‘referent’ in another, somewhat ambiguous, nomenclature), seizable by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized..."referential
But even though a set (Einstellung) toward the referent, an orientation toward the CONTEXT -- briefly the so-called REFERENTIAL, ‘denotative,’ ‘cognitive’ function -- is the leading task of numerous messages, the accessory participation of the other functions in such messages must be taken into account by the observant linguist.
addresser
"The ADDRESSER sends..."emotive
The so-called EMOTIVE or ‘expressive’ function, focused on the ADDRESSER, aims a direct expression of the speaker’s attitude toward what he is speaking about. It tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion whether true or feigned; therefore, the term ‘emotive,’ launched and advocated by Marty has proved to be preferable to ‘emotional.’ The purely emotive stratum in language is presented by the interjections. They differ from the means of referential language both by their sound pattern (peculiar sound sequences or even sounds elsewhere unusual) and by their syntactic role (they are not components but equivalents of sentences). ‘Tut! Tut! said McGinty’: the complete utterance of Conan Doyle’s character consists of two suction clicks.
message
"...a MESSAGE to..."poetic
*
addressee
"...the ADDRESSEE."conative
"Orientation toward the ADDRESSEE, the CONATIVE function, finds its purest grammatical expression in the vocative and imperative, which syntactically, morphologically, and often even phonemically deviate from other nominal and verbal categories. The imperative sentences cardinally differ from declarative sentences: the latter are and the former are not liable to a truth test."
channel
"...a CONTACT, a physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication"phatic
"There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works (‘Hello, do you hear me?’), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm his continued attention (‘Are you listening?’ or in Shakespearean diction, ‘Lend me your ears!’ -- and on the other end of the wire ‘Urn-hum!’). This set for CONTACT, or in Malinowski’s terms PHATIC function, may be displayed.by a profuse exchange of ritualized formulas, by entire dialogues with the mere purport of prolonging communication."
code
"...[and]a CODE fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and addressee (or in other words, to the encoder and decoder of the message)"metalingual
Whenever the addresser and/or the addressee need to check up whether they use the same code, speech is focused on the CODE: it performs a METALINGUAL (i.e., glossing) function. ‘I don’t follow you - what do you mean?’ asks the addressee, or in Shakespearean diction, ‘What is’t thou say’st?’
*"We have brought up all the six factors involved in verbal communication except the message itself. The set (Einstellung) toward the MESSAGE as such, focus on the message for its own sake, is the POETIC function of language. This function cannot be productively studied out of touch with the general problems of language, and, on the other hand, the scrutiny of language requires a thorough consideration of its poetic function."
Wow. That took a lot longer to make than I thought. And every time I had to use a deprecated HTML a puppy died. Hmmm.
Anyway, what I'm trying to talk about it the phenomenology of these different functions. Suppose we take a page out of a phenomenologist like Merleau-Ponty's book and run with something like this:
"The sense of the gesture is not given, but understood, that is, recaptured by an act on the spectator's part.... The communication or comprehension of gestures comes about through the reciprocity of my intentions and the gestures of others, of my gestures and intentions discernible in the conduct of other people. It is as if the other person's intentions inhabited my body and mine his."
Jakobson's model of communication is posited in the third-person voice. But we should be comfortable a this point with the idea of the compatibility of first-person and third-person accounts and the project of identifying the parts of one with parts of another. And though we should probably be cautious here, there is a clear affinity between the 'gesture' of M-P's first person description and the 'message' of Jakobson's model, the 'comprehender' and the 'addressee', and so on. If we keep thinking in this way, then it becomes clear that the Jakobson's 'context'--which I think is a stupid name, by the way--is the object of the intention of which is inhabited by both the gesturer and the one who understands the gesture.
So we would expect that when the referential function of communication dominates, the message (and the code, and the channel) itself hardly enters consciousness. One isn't paying attention to the message in these cases; one is fixated on the content (even when that content is not present or even an 'object' in the standard sense at all). And so on with the emotive and conative functions--although here the object of the intention is the addresser or addressee (?? -- I could see telling this story getting really complicated. If I use the imperative voice to say to you "Kick the ball!" then perhaps I am attempting to instill in you an intention towards the ball that reveals its potential to be kicked by you.)
So where was I? I wanted to bring all this up, not just to be pedantic, but to point out what happens when you are in conversation with a close and trusted friend whom you haven't seen for a while. What happens is that the code is so shared, and the channel so robust since it is glued in place by that the intensity of the friendship at that moment (there is nothing that would cause one's mind to deviate, for example), that one's attention is never removed from the content of the discussion in order to establish some kind of metalingual or phatic repair. And unless one is actively engaging in poetry or wordplay (we were not), then there was no reason for us to perceive any of the words we exchanged.
I think that wound up being long-winded. Ironically, I meant to move off this topic to the actual contents of the conversation, which was really interesting. But I seem to have spent a couple hours already talking about the act of communication itself. Another time, I guess.