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content and context

I'm reading A Schizoanalytic Reading of Baudelaire: The Modernist as Postmodernist. It includes the following useful tidbit:
According to Jakobson, the metaphoric axis of discourse is based on the identity or equivalence among terms as defined by the storehouse of the language-system functioning "in absentia" (as Saussure put it) "outside" the linear time of utterance. The metonymic axis, by contrast, sustains the process of combining different terms contiguously to form a chain of signification "within" time--that is, in the duration of utterance. The metaphoric axis is thus a function of the language-system, and appears to exist as a given, outside of time, in contrast to the metonymic axis which is precisely the sequentiality of actual discourse as it is produced in context and through time. Jakobson thus concludes that every sign used in discourse has "two sets of interpretants . . . the code and the context."
A note gives the reference as follows, to "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbance" in Fundamentals of Language (with Morris Halle) (The Hague: Mouton, 1956), 67-96; the quotation is from page 75. There are some other things I'd like to return to in the article as a whole, but for now I'll just mention that phatic behavior seems to be very much aligned with contextual speech.

Comments

  1. Jakobson did have a lot of distinctions that somehow formed an intelligible sequence: metaphor/metonym, language/speech, code/message, selection/combination, in absentia / in presentia, etc. I was aware of this sequence but I hadn't noticed this particular aspect here. It actually makes a lot of sense. The code set of interpretants is unproblematic because this is captured in the metalingual function (which operates on code): namely, the interpretant of any given linguistic sign is captured in another linguistic sign (e.g. what is a "bachelor"? an unmarried man). These interpretants are "outside of time" because they are in absentia - not present in current speech until it is brought into it, at which time it is produced "through time", that is, uttered in speech in presentia. In Jakobson's view language is like a "storehouse" in a sense we would liken to a "database" - imagine a table in which the rows present all words imaginable, and the columns manifest the equivalence between all possible signifiers with equivalent signifieds in the same language as well as different languages (cat, chat, katze, koshka, kass, etc.). This much is pretty evident in a lot of places in Jakobson's writings. The bit about context is slightly more problematic, because Jakobson's understanding of context is linguistic (literally, co-text). That is, the nonverbal situation in which speech occurs is not the context for him, but as soon as something is said about it (e.g. "nice weather today") it becomes part of the verbal context. By noting that every sign used in discourse also has a set of interpretants in the context he means that whatever you say can be further interpretad according to what you said next. For example, if after "nice weather today" you mentioned "I'm thinking about going fishing" then these two utterances are related.

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    1. Where all this gets phatic is actually in Bakhtin's writings (via Urbanová 2007: 350-351):

      "A large number of genres that are widespread in everyday life are so standard that the speaker's individual speech is manifested only in its choice of a particular genre, and, perhaps, in its expressive intonation. Such, for example, are the various everyday genres of greetings, farewells, congratulations, all kinds of wishes, information about health, business, and so forth. These genres are so diverse because they differ depending on the situation, social position and personal interrelations of the participants in the communication." (Bakhtin 1999: 127)

      Bakhtin's approach here is comparable to Jakobson's above. According to this interpretation, the "genres of everyday life" like greetings, farewells, congradulations, etc. are "standard" because they are part of the code. They are standardised - there's not a lot of variation in "How are you?" aside from expressive intonation. It is also interchangeable (equivalent) with other such greetings, like "Great to see you!" But where it gets diverse is again in the context dimension, but here Bakhtin does not hold context to be purely verbal (which is Jakobson's idiosyncracy) but notes the situation, social position, relationships, etc. which make up what we regularly think of as the context of communication.

      So in the end it is actually true that phatic behavior is more aligned with the context. Phatic utterances as code elements are "outside of time" - they exist in that storehouse of phatic expressions. But phatic communion, the phatic process of establishing a social relationship, is much more contextual, because real people in present situation with actual relationships come into play.

      Also, note that Bakhtin's list can be aligned with organon dimensions: social position is a property of the addresser (phatic-emotive); personal interrelation is oriented towards the addressee and marks the addresser's relationship with the addressee (phatic-conative); and the situation concerns the definition of the situation or how the participants understand, interpret or frame what is going on (phatic-cognitive).

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  2. Just noticed this:

    Rick: «Beth, Squanchy culture is more contextual than literal.»

    Beth: «I SQUANCH my family.»

    [Shock.]

    Beth: «I do, I squanch my family.»

    Squanchy: «Stop saying it, gross!»

    ~~

    The Bakhtin quote reminds me of the Geertz/Bateson research on Bali that I keep mentioning. I should post the quote from "A Thousand Plateaus" where I first encountered this...

    ~~

    On the topic of phatic-cognitive, I think I'm understanding it better. I wonder if we should expand κ to something like κ₁ κ₂ κ₃ κ₄ κ₅ to denote context, problem, solution, rationale, resolution (from the standard design pattern template).

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