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プラハ言語学サークルにおける機能の概念
| Title: | プラハ言語学サークルにおける機能の概念 |
| Other Titles: | Prague School Functionalism in a Historical Context |
| Authors: | 大平, 陽一1 Browse this author →KAKEN DB |
| Authors(alt): | Ohira, Yoichi1 |
| Issue Date: | 16-Jul-2020 |
| Publisher: | 北海道大学スラブ・ユーラシア研究センター |
| Journal Title: | スラヴ研究 |
| Journal Title(alt): | Slavic Studies |
| Volume: | 67 |
| Start Page: | 83 |
| End Page: | 114 |
| Abstract: | The “functional” attribute has been a characteristic feature of the Prague Linguistic Circle (PLC) since its inception. The term was chiefly recognized within the teleonomic frame of reference. The central members of the PLC featuring V. Mathesius, R. Jakobson, P. Bogatyrev, and J. Muka?ovsky were distinguished individuals with different academic interests and cultural backgrounds. While their conceptualizations of “function” accordingly reflect a great diversity of perspectives, specific differences among them can be identified on both the horizontal (between individuals) and vertical (the development of the opinions of individuals) axes. This article explores the roots and development of functionalism in the Prague school, addressing the various modes of its employment in linguistics, ethnography, and aesthetics. The term “function(al)” is ubiquitous in the entire writings of the Prague scholars. For instance, the opening paragraph of the first chapter of the “Theses” presented by the PLC to the First Congress of Slavists in 1929 is titled “Conception de la langue comme systeme functional,” and the title of Chapter 9 reads “Importance de la linguistique fonctionelle.” Furthermore, the corresponding Czech term “funk?ni lingvistika” appears as the title of one of Mathesius’s essays from 1929 that explores the “functional” principle through a discussion of the common requirement for expression and communication, and subsequently investigates the means to satisfy them. To ascertain the precise notional interpretation of this term is a complex task, however. The reasons for this difficulty are manifold. First, almost no scholarly attempt has been made to define “function,” a pivotal concept in the writings of the Prague school. Second, as the concept was applied to multiple domains such as linguistics, ethnography, poetics, and aesthetics, it has inevitably undergone various modifications. Finally, one can identify differences and vacillations in various authors’ interpretation of the concept of “function.” The exploration of the usage of “function(al)” in the PLC writings requires an inquiry into the theoretical and philosophical background, as well as the inspiration that informs the systematic introduction of this concept into linguistic, ethnographic, and aesthetic debates. The dearth of direct references to relevant literature in prewar PLC writings confines our analysis to highlighting some possible influences from the works of Durkheim, RadcliffeBrown, Engli?, Baudouin de Courtenay, and Tynjanov, among others. While J. Baudouin de Courtenay undoubtedly shaped Mathesius’s conceptualization of functionality, the latter was likely to be inspired by certain works of sociology, too. Jakobson, who arrived in Prague in 1920?several years before the formation of the PLC?was among central representatives of “Formalism” in Russia together with Tynjanov. With a teleological orientation in his writings of the Russian period, Jakobson was renowned for his detailed analysis of issues concerning Russian functional language, particularly his analysis of poetic language. Jakobson further developed the functional notion of “poetic language,” a characteristic feature of Russian Formalism, and incorporated it into his well-known six-function model. While Jakobson and Tynjanov coauthored a renowned thesis “Problems of Literary and Linguistic Studies,” Tynjanov’s mathematical model is in marked contrast to Jakobson’s conceptualization of “function.” In his Prague period Jakobson extended his functional explanations to the treatment of language development, focusing mainly on the domain of phonology toward the end of the 1930s. In 1927 he gave a lecture titled “The concept of the sound law and the teleological principle,” in which he presented the notion of a goal-directed interpretation. Characterized as a “therapeutic change,” the essence of this idea was that a system of language is always striving to balance its elements. In his American-period works, Jakobson increasingly attempted to underpin teleological concepts with references to philosophical and scientific thought contemporary of that time. Although Dane? underscores the diverging views on the notion of functionalism marked by Jakobson’s teleological and Mathesius’s common-sense approach, this divergence is actually less substantial than it may appear. Indeed, this divergence can be reconciled if we accept Pittendrigh’s suggestion that the new conception of finality be distinguished from the old, metaphysical idea of a final cause through the neologism “teleonomy.” As many functions of language (especially in the field of phonology) are unconscious, they cannot be simply understood with teleological (goal-intended) processes based on conscious ideas but must be explained as teleonomical (goal-directed) processes with no consciously acting, discernible actor. Having arrived in Czechoslovakia in 1922 and become an active member of PLC, the Russian ethnographer P. Bogatyrev was the first to apply the functional-structural method to folklore study and account for the polyfunctionality of the ethnographic phenomena. In his Czech-period works, he discovered that various functions intersect with and interpenetrate into one another in folk culture. The core concepts of PLC?structure, sign, and function?were also crucial elements of Muka?ovsky’s structural aesthetics. His structuralist period roughly lasted from 1928 to 1948, in which we can discern three stages reflecting a different accent on each of the three basic components of aesthetic interaction. While Muka?ovsky’s focus in his “Formalism” stage was primarily on the internal structure of artwork, by the mid-1930s he began to explore the set of norms valid for a particular collectivity. Then, at the beginning of the 1940s, his emphasis shifted from supra-individual codes to the subject’s role in the aesthetic process. Now Muka?ovsky described his conceptualization of aesthetics as “the study of the aesthetic function, its manifestations, and its vehicles.” Although this statement seems to make little difference from that of previous years, the third phase marked a sea change in his conceptualization of function in general and aesthetic function in particular: having originally treated function from the standpoint of the object, Muka?ovsky adopted the perspective of the subject. Finally, in his article “The place of the aesthetic function among the other functions” (1942), Muka?ovsky defined “function” as “the mode of a subject’s self-realization vis-a-vis the external world.” Positioning the subject as the source of all functionality, Muka?ovsky further advanced his thesis of the polyfunctionality of all artifacts, as he selected the deduction from the subject-object relation as an approach toward constructing his typology of functions. Thus, according to Muka?ovsky, all possible subjectobject interactions could be subsumed under four main functions, namely, practical, theoretical, symbolic, and aesthetic. These functions are classified under two coordinates, the first of which relates to the type of subject-object relation?i.e., “immediate” vs “mediated (semiotic),” and the second refers to the hierarchy of subject and object in functional interaction. Muka?ovsky’s dynamic functional model related to the various functions operating in art objects was, however, completely superseded by Jakobson’s six-component model encompassing the emotive, referential, poetic, phatic, metalinguistic, and conative dimensions. Literary and artistic theoreticians have treated Jakobson’s scheme as a universally applicable set of functions, overlooking the fact that the latter was derived specifically from his linguistic pursuit. An obvious criticism that can be addressed against the Jakobsonian model is that his scheme is not dynamic, as its “poles” do not take shape with pairs either opposed to “dialoguing” with one another, or dialectically shifting combinations, but rather stay fixed coexisting side by side. In short, Jakobson’s model is likely to be a manifold of six functions that simply coexist in juxtaposition, while four or five of the six serve as a “ground.” In contrast, the model that Muka?ovsky developed in the 1940s is not closed nor static in nature but truly dialectical. |
| Type: | bulletin (article) |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2115/84284 |
| Appears in Collections: | スラヴ研究 = Slavic Studies > 67
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