So I realized only after the fact that what Joe called "phatic-x layers" have a precedent in Roman Jakobson's writings. Namely, he calls these duplex structures and in one instance dedicates a full chapter to four intersections between code and message. In Jakobson's view these are: "reported speech (M/M), the autonymous form of speech (M/C), a proper name (C/C), and shifters (C/M)" (Jakobson 1971[1957c]: 133). This part of Jakobson's work excited me greatly, because it was written in 1957 and in the next year, 1958, he first formulated his scheme of language functions, which suggests that even if his scheme isn't directly based on these duplex structures, he did think along the same lines when he formulated his famous scheme.
I am most excited over the fact that (M/M) and (M/C) can be reinterpreted as metacommunication (message about message) and metalingual operations (message about code). It would be nice to assign specific letters to all the components in his scheme:
Now all one needs to do is fill in the table:
Since the original triad (Sender, Receiver, Object) looks so empty, it may be that those rows (maybe even columns) can be discarded for the moment. I'll have to think it over.
All this is somewhat troubling because it demands a reconsideration of what is a "function" and what is a "structure":
There is also a bigger issue looming behind the corner. That is, whether it is a good idea to take Jakobson's scheme as a starting point after all? Even throwing out the columns and rows for Sender, Receiver and Object may not be enough to make it work, since Jakobson's components are inherently erratic and the duplex structures that would yield from such pairing of means and ends (as in the above table) would be equally, if not more, erratic.
Perhaps it would be more productive to throw out the bathwater and keep the baby. In other words, to return to Karl Bühler's original organon model and try to combine it with Ruesch's computer metaphors: sender/output/expression, object/central processing/evaluation, and receiver/input/perception. This would necessitate creating a whole new model, which I believe would be more useful, as the triad of perception, evaluation and expression is more compatible with Charles Peirce's three types of interpretants: emotion, action and cognition. Thus, instead of mere semantics of some types of phenomena it would include the sphere of pragmatics and allow discussing instigation (as Kockelman put it) of attitude toward object/referent, action toward object/referent, and thought about object/referent, etc. I see much more potental for theorizing in this approach than I do in playing around with Jakobson's scheme. Again, I'll have to think about it and let the idea settle in me.
I am most excited over the fact that (M/M) and (M/C) can be reinterpreted as metacommunication (message about message) and metalingual operations (message about code). It would be nice to assign specific letters to all the components in his scheme:
- C - code
- M - message
- S - sender/addresser
- R - receiver/addressee
- O - object/referent/context
- P - channel/contact (P as in phatic)
Now all one needs to do is fill in the table:
| x/x | Code | Message | Sender | Receiver | Object | Phatics |
| Code | C/C - proper names | C/M - shifters | - | - | - | - |
| Message | M/C - metalingual operations | M/M - metacommunication | - | - | - | M/P - phatic function |
| Sender | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Receiver | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Object | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Phatics | P/C - equalization | P/M - μ-function | P/S - communization | P/R - differentiation | P/O - parachannel | P/P - metachannel |
Since the original triad (Sender, Receiver, Object) looks so empty, it may be that those rows (maybe even columns) can be discarded for the moment. I'll have to think it over.
All this is somewhat troubling because it demands a reconsideration of what is a "function" and what is a "structure":
[...] during the last decades the terms "structure" and "function" have become the most equivocal and stereotyped words in the science of language. In particular, the homonyms function 'role, task' - viewed from the means-ends angle and function as correspondence between two mathematical variables, are often used promiscuously, and as Lalande's Philosophical Dictionary justly warns, "there is here a source of confusion which makes certain pages of our time scarcely intelligible." (Jakobson 1971[1962b]: 526)While his "language functions" are usually understood in the sense of "language use", e.g. the role or task that language fulfills in a specific instance of its application, the second possibility of interpreting "function" as correspondence between two mathemathical variables is more tempting, seeing as his own duplex structures rely on this interpretation. That is, I am inclined to view "function" as a correlation between means and ends: given that the the rows represent means (what is used...) and columns represent ends (...used on what).
There is also a bigger issue looming behind the corner. That is, whether it is a good idea to take Jakobson's scheme as a starting point after all? Even throwing out the columns and rows for Sender, Receiver and Object may not be enough to make it work, since Jakobson's components are inherently erratic and the duplex structures that would yield from such pairing of means and ends (as in the above table) would be equally, if not more, erratic.
Perhaps it would be more productive to throw out the bathwater and keep the baby. In other words, to return to Karl Bühler's original organon model and try to combine it with Ruesch's computer metaphors: sender/output/expression, object/central processing/evaluation, and receiver/input/perception. This would necessitate creating a whole new model, which I believe would be more useful, as the triad of perception, evaluation and expression is more compatible with Charles Peirce's three types of interpretants: emotion, action and cognition. Thus, instead of mere semantics of some types of phenomena it would include the sphere of pragmatics and allow discussing instigation (as Kockelman put it) of attitude toward object/referent, action toward object/referent, and thought about object/referent, etc. I see much more potental for theorizing in this approach than I do in playing around with Jakobson's scheme. Again, I'll have to think about it and let the idea settle in me.
References
- Jakobson, Roman 1971[1957c]. Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 130-147.
- Jakobson, Roman 1971[1962b]. Efforts toward a means-ends model of language in interwar continental linguistics. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 522-526.
Regarding "structure" - two thoughts. First begins with a quote from Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 231-232 Continuum edn.
ReplyDelete«A structure or an Idea is a "complex theme", an internal multiplicity -- in other words, a system is multiple, non-localisable connections between differential elements which is incarnated in real relations and actual terms. In this sense, we see no difficultiy in reconciling genesis and structure. Following Lautman and Vuillemin's work on mathematics, "structuralism" seems to us the only means by which a genetic method can achieve its ambitions. It is sufficient to understand that genesis takes place in time not between one actual term, however small, and another actual term, but between the virtual and its actualisation -- in other words, it goes from the structure to its incarnation, from the conditions of a problem to the cases of solution, from the differential elements and their ideal connections to actual terms and diverse real relations which constitute at each moment the actuality of time.»
OK, bla bla bla - what is going on here is that "structure" is roughly speaking an attractor, as in chaos theory. He's saying that we can have "dynamic structure". Where does "function" go in such a case? I'm not sure, maybe it goes away.
The second thought is one from me but related to the above. If we think about the dynamics of a "landscape" -- imagine mountain ranges rising up, seas here and there, forests, and so forth -- all of this could be, by the way, taking place within the "virtual" level of attractors rather than being actualized. Why not. Well, here what's going on is structural, again, following Deleuze's Riemannian inspirations, we may as well think of the "landscape" defined in terms of dx's and dy's and dz's and so on. All well and good. But then, imagine some agents populating this landscape. They have to negotiate with each other. Some might say: "The resource gradient is such that we should look over here for food." And another might say, "yes, but if you go too far over that way, you get to where the tigers live, so we need to be careful."
They are referring to real "structural" features of the landscape, but their actions within and on this landscape are rendered "functional" in the language that they are using. Now, from another point of view, the agents are just one part of the landscape, and they have their own dx's and dy's and dt's that determine what they will do. But I think that we get some clue about where "functions" are. The functional aspects of language are basically programming, whereas the structural aspects are about things that can be taken as given.
Another somewhat related division is G. H. Mead's I vs Me.
ReplyDeleteMead's: "the I is the response of the organism to the attitudes of others and the me is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes." (1934, p. 175).
The parallel to what I said above is more clear in this remix by Paul Kockelman:
"The Me is the self as appropriating, having taken into account others' attitudes toward (or interpretants of) its mental states and social statuses (or kinds more generally); and the I is the self as effecting, enacting roles (or expressing indices) that change others' attitudes (and often others' kinds)." - p. 90 of Agent, Person, Subject, Self: A Theory of Ontology, Interaction, and Infrastructure