Jakobson

Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) was a Russian-born linguist and literary theorist who became a leading figure in the Moscow Circle and the Prague School, and later taught in the United States. He helped shape structural linguistics and semiotics and played a central role in developing functional and formal analyses of language.

Born in Moscow, Jakobson studied at Moscow State University and joined the Moscow Linguistic Circle, contributing to phonology, poetics, and the theory of signs. In the 1920s and 1930s he moved to Prague, where he collaborated with key Prague School scholars and helped advance structural analysis of language and its functional dimensions. He emigrated to the United States during World War II and taught at the New School for Social Research, among other institutions, continuing his work in linguistics and semiotics.

Jakobson is best known for formulating the six functions of language: referential, emotive, conative, phatic, metalingual, and poetic. He stressed the functional distribution of linguistic elements and their contextual use, linking linguistic description with literary and semiotic interpretation. His essays in Linguistics and Poetics and other writings advanced phonology, morphology, and the analysis of poetry and translation, influencing later structuralist and semiotic theories.

His influence extends across linguistics, literary studies, and cognitive semiotics. Key themes include the functional roles of language, the study of phoneme structure, and the idea that poetic form can illuminate the nature of communication itself. Collections of his work, such as Selected Writings, compile his major contributions for scholars and students.