A Reconsideration of Poetic Metalinguistic Functions in Jakobson's Means-Ends Model

In his well-known article “Linguistics and Poetics,” Roman Jakobson proposed the Means-Ends model, which is now recognized as the most authoritative model of language functions. In this model, Jakobson identified three factors in Carl Büller's classical Organon model: the sender (the first person), receiver (the second person), and something or someone as the topic of the utterance (the third person) --and the three functions associated with each factor, namely, the expressive, conative, and representation functions. Thus, Jakobson's innovation lies in supplementing the Organon model with three additional factors and three corresponding functions, namely, the three factors contact, code, and message, and the corresponding phatic, metalinguistic, and poetic functions. In Jakobson's Means-Ends model understanding of language, among the six functions are the poetic function, defined as a “focus on the message for its own sake,” and the metalinguistic function, defined as “focus on the code,” which are frequently discussed with the referential function, which is dominant in most messages. Jakobson sharply distinguishes between these two functions. However, in reality, the distinction between the two functions is not always easy to make; this is particularly true in the case of poetic works including wordplay. For instance, in Ezra Pound's lines “To study with the white wings of time passing/ is not that our delight/ to have friends come from far countries/ is not that pleasure,” the phrase “white wings” creates a montage of the kanji characters for “white” 白 and “wing” 羽, suggesting the kanji character for “study” 習, thus achieving a poetic effect through a metalinguistic operation. The difficulty in distinguishing between the poetic/metalinguistic functions lies in the fact that the distinctive features of poetic and metalinguistic functions forms a binary opposition between code and message. However, code and message are language in the broad sense, and the opposition between them is neutralized, becoming non-differential. There is a commonality--of reflexivity or self-reference--between the metalinguistic and poetic functions, in that words as message refer to words as code or message. In his article “Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb,” Jakobson also discusses the correlations between message and code, stating that “both the message and the underlying code are vehicles of linguistic communication, but both of them function in a duplex manner; they may at once be utilized and referred to.” In this paper, messages referring to the code are defined as “metalanguage,” which is not far removed from the definition of “metalinguistic function” as “the set toward the code” in “Linguistics and Poetics.” Nevertheless, when discussing messages that refer to messages, Jakobson categorically states that they are “reported speech,” as if self-referentiality were impossible; he discusses them as if they were completely unrelated to poetic function. However, this is because he has excluded the possibility that a message can refer to itself by stating in “Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb” that “a message may refer to the code or to another message.” While a message may focus on itself, it seems almost impossible for a message to refer to itself. However, the texts printed in Takamatsu Jiro's offset lithographs “Japanese Characters” and “English Words,”「この七つの文字」(these seven characters) and “THESE THREE WORDS,” are self-referential messages that possess poetic and metalinguistic functions.