Problems in the Study of Language and Literature Author(s): R. Jakobson, Ju. Tynjanov, H. Eagle Source: Poetics Today, Vol.

2, No. 1a, Roman Jakobson: Language and Poetry (Autumn, 1980), pp. 29-31 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772349 Accessed: 27/01/2009 08:20
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PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE*

R. JAKOBSON AND JU. TYNJANOV

1. The immediate problems facing Russian literary and linguistic science demand a precise theoretical platform. They require a firm dissociation from the increasing mechanistic tendency to paste together mechanically the new methodology and old obsolete methods; they necessitate a determined refusal of the contraband offer of naive psychologism and other methodological handme-downs in the guise of new terminology. Furthermore, academic eclecticism and pedantic "formalism" - which replaces analysis by terminology and the classification of phenomena - and the repeated attempts to shift literary and linguistic studies from a systematic science to episodic and anecdotal genres should be rejected. 2. The history of literature (art), being simultaneous with other historical series, is characterized, as is each of these series, by an involved complex of specific structural laws. Without an elucidation of these laws, it is impossible to establish in a scientific manner the correlation between the literary series and other historical series. 3. The evolution of literature cannot be understood until the evolutionary problem ceases to be obscured by questions about episodic, nonsystemic genesis, whether literary (for example, so-called "literary influences") or extraliterary. The literary and extraliterary material used in literature may be introduced into the orbit of scientific investigation only when it is considered from a functional point of view. 4. The sharp opposition of synchronic (static) and diachronic cross sections has recently become a fruitful working hypothesis, both for linguistics and for
* Written in Russian during Jurij Tynjanov's visit to Prague in the winter of 1928 (cf. R. Jakobson, SW V, pp. 560ff.). The present English translation by H. Eagle was first published in L. Matejka and K. Pomorska, eds., Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), 79-81. To be published in Selected Writings Ill (Mouton). [See Editors' note.] ? Poetics Today, Vol. 2:la (1980), 29-31

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& TYNJANOV JAKOBSON

history of literature, inasmuch as it has demonstrated that language, as well as literature, has a systemic character at each individual moment of its existence. At the present time, the achievements of the synchronic concept force us to reconsider the principles of diachrony as well. The idea of a mechanical agglomeration of material, having been replaced by the concept of a system or structure in the realm of synchronic study, underwent a corresponding replacement in the realm of diachronic study as well. The history of a system is in turn a system. Pure synchronism now proves to be an illusion: every synchronic system has its past and its future as inseparable structuralelements of the system: (a) archaism as a fact of style; the linguistic and literary background recognized as the rejected old-fashioned style; (b) the tendency toward innovation in language and literature recognized as a renewal of the system. The opposition between synchrony and diachrony was an opposition between the concept of system and the concept of evolution; thus it loses its importance in principle as soon as we recognize that every system necessarily exists as an evolution, whereas, on the other hand, evolution is inescapably of a systemic nature. 5. The concept of a synchronic literary system does not coincide with the naively envisaged concept of a chronological epoch, since the former embraces not only works of art which are close to each other in time but also works which are drawn into the orbit of the system from foreign literatures or previous epochs. An indifferent cataloguing of coexisting phenomena is not sufficient; what is important is their hierarchical significance for the given epoch. 6. The assertion of two differing concepts - la langue and la parole - and the analysis of the relationship between them (the Geneva school) has been exceedingly fruitful for linguistic science. The principles involved in relating these two categories (i.e., the existing norm and the individual utterances) as applied to literature must be elaborated. In this latter case, the individual utterance cannot be considered without reference to the existing complex of norms. (The investigator, in isolating the former from the latter, inescapably deforms the system of artistic values under consideration, thus losing the possibility of establishing its immanent laws.) 7. An analysis of the structural laws of language and literature and their evolution inevitably leads to the establishment of a limited series of actually existing structural types (and, correspondingly, of types of structuralevolution). 8. A disclosure of the immanent laws of the history of literature (and language) allows us to determine the character of each specific change in literary (and linguistic) systems. However, these laws do not allow us to explain the tempo of evolution or the chosen path of evolution when several, theoretically possible, evolutionary paths are given. This is owing to the fact that the immanent laws of literary (and, corresponding, linguistic) evolution form an indeterminate equation; although they admit only a limited number of possible solutions, they do not necessarily specify a unique solution. The question of a specific choice

PROBLEMS IN STUDY OF LANGUAGE / LITERATURE

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of path, or at least of the dominant, can be solved only through an analysis of the correlation between the literary series and other historical series. This correlation (a system of systems) has its own structural laws, which must be submitted to investigation. It would be methodologically fatal to consider the correlation of systems without taking into account the immanent laws of each system. EDITORS' NOTE the Soviet theoretician of poetry and historical poetics, ("Formalist") Jurij Tynjanov, visited Prague in December of 1928. This manifesto was published in Moscow in Novyj LEF ["The New LEF"] 1928, No. 12, pp. 36-37. LEF=the Left Front of Art, was the journal of the Russian Futurists, who had close personal and ideological ties with the Russian Formalist scholars. The theses were prefaced by the following editorial (translated by B.H.): LEF presents to its readers the following theses on the modern study of language and literature, formulated by Roman Jakobson and Jurij Tynjanov. The old science separated, in principle, theoretical from historical disciplines. The study of literature was divided between poetics and literary history. Poetics described constructive elements of a work of literature in isolation from its overall construction and from the process of literary evolution. History of literature registered in a chronological order facts of biography, literature and cultural history collected at random. A similar division of areas of research existed in lingustics, e.g., phonetics was a purely descriptive discipline, classifying sound elements without recourse to their functional values in the general system of language. The modern science of language and literature abolishes this opposition between theory and history, and assumes that a theoretical analysis is impossible without a consideration of the dialectics of history (the flow and change of literaryand linguistic values) and vice versa - historical research cannot be fruitful without a theoretical recognition of the specific aspects of its material. Instead of the question posed by the old science "why?" we find in the forefront the question "what for?" (the problem of functionality). Research deals not merely with constructive functions (functions of elements constituting a literary fact), and not only with immanent literary functions of various genres, but also with the social function of the literary series in various periods. Thus the science of language and literature moves from the category of historical disciplines to the category of social, or sociological disciplines. The Editors