jakobson: aphasia

‘apahasia as a linguistic topic’ in Selected Writings: Word and Language

in this volume, this essay precedes the ‘two types’ essay more routinely cited.

232: “The two opposite tropes, metaphor and metonymy, present the most condensed expression of two basic modes of relation: the internal relation of similarity (and contrast) underlies the metaphor; the external relation of contiguity (and remoteness) determines the metonymy.”

“Language in its various aspects deals with both modes of relation. Whether messages are exchanged or communication proceeds unilaterally from the addresser to the addressee, there must be some kind of contiguity betweent he participants of any speech event to assure the transmission of the message. The separation in space, and often in time, between two individuals, the addresser and the addressee, is bridged by an internal relation: there must be a certain equivalence between the symbols used by the addresser and those known and interpreted by the addressee. Without such equivalence the message is fruitless–even when it reaches the receiver, it does not affect him.”

notes: metonymy as external relation, emphasis on remoteness (and presumably nearness); mode of relation [so emerson’s focus on relations fits this linguistic understanding Jakobson offers. also see that metonymy/contiguity is basis for communication: for transmission of message; and metaphoric for interpretation. So metonymy thus focused more on medium; and metaphor on message?

235: describes the similarity disorder: those who can’t make internal relation/substitituion based on similarity that associates with metaphor. thus tend toward metonymy. notes that this means they can’t do metalanguage.

236: the attention is focused upon contiguity.the most frequently used words are the ‘indices of relations” found in conjunctions, pronouns, articles

the opposite disorder: patient cannot operate with contiguity, but can use similarity. lose ability to “propositionize. The context disintegrates” relational words omitted.

does ‘propositionize’ or sense of build meaning through context compare to emerson’s notion of analogizing?

His concluding paragraph, 238: “While each of these two types of aphasia tends toward unipolarity, normal verbal behavior is bipolar. But any individual use of language, any verbal style, any trend in verbal art displays a clear predilection either for the metonymical or for the metaphorical device.”

any comparisons to be made with Hayles on deep vs. hyper attention?

Lodge: metonymy

David Lodge, The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern Literature (Cornell 1977).

Part 2: section on Metaphor and Metonymy

emphasizes/reads Jakobson–key is that RJ sees the two in terms of binary opposition (much as language works through structuralist view: langue vs. parole). His distillation of RJ’s two poles (p. 81)

Metaphor               Metonymy

Paradigm              Syntagm

Similarity              Contiguity

Selection              Combination

Substitution         Contexture [deletion]

Drama                Film

Montage             Close-up

Dream symbolism       Dream condensation and displacement

Surrealism         Cubism

Poetry              Prose

Lyric              Epic

Romanticism/Symbolism          Realism

Key point Lodge makes in distinguishing metaphorical subsitituion from contexture/contiguity is deletion: combination in which something has been taken out. Metonymy is condensation of contexture (76): The keels of the ships crossed the deep sea becomes the metonymic: keels crossed the deep.

• this sense of condensation and deletion is relevant to photography: think of this as a version of index, perhaps more accurate evocation of the photochemistry. But also the notion of something condensed and deleted: this gets to a larger communication model (dissemination, incompleteness, interpretation) of the ’sign’–one that I find limited in Peirce/index. [think back to Peters: doesn’t use metaphor/metonymy–though that would seem to be similar to his binary dynamic of dialogue and dissemination: that if metaphor is the dream, it is delivered only through the underlying metonymy.
• also think of how Sekula uses metonymy in his focus on the archive–in relation to the image; whereas Krauss in her focus on the index doesn’t address the contexture of the image reception. 
• Can we now update the metaphor/metonymy binary list to include: narrative vs. database?

Overall: seeing that metonymy is a way to think about larger rhetorical attention, or structuring of attention and discourse–rhetorical effect; larger than semiotic. and from RJ on–can see that the interest is in thinking about a larger polarity of how our language and (more recently, as tied to that) our cognition works.

92: observes RJ’s awareness that metaphor is privileged over metonymy (in his essay on Linguistics and Poetics

111: metonymic text (in contrast to the poetic)–viewed generally as nonliterary, where the poetic function is not foregrounded: deluges us with a plethora of data. Yet still available for metaphorical interpretation. Reminds us that the distinctions are not mutally exlcusive types of discourse, but distinction based on dominance.

From RJ and the russian formalists: the poetic/metaphorical function of language: where poetic function of language is foregrounded. And for metonymic, where the referent is foregounded, not the message. However, need to think through this. This also means that with metaphor, the foregrounding can and perhaps should occlude the process of the poetry (the traditional sense of not mean but be)–the substitution is so complete that no traces of the context of its making is evident. Isn’t this how Marcus Root views the artistry of photography? And for metonymy–in fact what is foregrounded, in the partial representation of context, is the process. Think specimen: not just a part that represents a larger/missing whole; but a part that represents itself in relation to the production or the authoring–the traces of the artists’ hands.

so metonymy relates to the shift toward: reader turning into the writer; from metaphorical reading to wreading. In the traditional conception of the metaphor of poetry, the reader is to receive the poem. in the metonymic (and perhaps in the the way technology metonymizes writing/art–from Benjamin to digital), the reader is to write the poem. Isn’t there also here a pedagogical component, not just an interpretive one? The shift from interpretive metalanguage (point Lodge makes about RJ and why metaphor is privileged, it is a metalanguage like criticism) to: ? to process writing. This is also a shift (back, forward) into a certain understanding of literary education.