Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

430 Roman Jakobson
alone’), belongs to the urgent linguistic tasks vitally connected with the progres-
sively increasing radius of communication.
Our cursory survey of topics itemized in the recent programs of socio- and
ethnolinguistics (cf. particularly 75; 59; 17; 106; 29; 58; 46; 48) shows that all
of these questions require a strictly and intrinsically linguistic analysis and
present a pertinent and inalienable part of linguistics proper. William Bright
shrewdly points out the common denominator of these programs: ‘linguistic
diversity is precisely the subject matter of sociolinguistics’ (r7, p. 11; cf. 73).
Yet this same diversity may be characterized as the chief target of international
linguistic thought in its endeavors to overcome the Saussurian model of langue
as a static, uniform system of mandatory rules and to supplant this oversim-
plified and artificial construct by the dynamic view of a diversified, convertible
code with regard to the different functions of language and to the time and
space factors, both of which were excluded from the Saussurian conception of
the linguistic system. As long as this conception finds its adepts again and
again, we must repeat that any experimental reduction of linguistic reality can
lead to valuable scientific conclusions so long as we do not take the deliberately
narrowed frame of the experiment for the unrestricted linguistic reality.
Since verbal messages analyzed by linguists are linked with communication
of nonverbal messages or with exchange of utilities and mates, the linguistic
research is to be supplemented by wider semiotic and anthropological investi-
gation. As foreseen in Trubetzkoy’s letter of 1926 (r74), the integrated science
of communication is intended to show, according to Bright’s formulation, ‘the
systematic covariance of linguistic structure and social structure’ (17). Or, in
Benveniste’s terms: ‘le problkme sera bien plutBt de dkcouvrir la base commune
5 la langue et a la sociktk, les principes qui commandent ces deux structures,
en dkfinissant d‘abord les unitks qui dans I’une et dans I’autre se preteraient 2
6tre comparks, et d’en faire ressortir l’interdependance’ (8, p. 15).
Lkvi-Strauss contemplates the path of such future interdisciplinary research :
‘Nous sommes conduits, en effet, h nous demander si divers aspects de la vie
sociale (y compris I’art et la religion) - dont nous savons dkji que l’ktude peut
s’aider de mkthodes et de notions empruntkes a la linguistique - ne consistent
pas en phhomknes dont la nature rejoint celle meme du langage ... il faudra
pousser l’analyse des diffkrents aspects de la vie sociale assez profondkment
pour atteindre un niveau oh le passage deviendra possible de I‘un a l’autre;
c’est-&-dire klaborer une sorte de code universel, capable d‘exprimer les pro-
priktks communes aux structures spkcifiques relevant de chaque aspect. L‘emploi
de ce code devra Etre lkgitime pour chaque systkme pris isolkment, et pour tous
quand il s’agira de les comparer. O n se mettra ainsi en position de savoir si
l’on a atteint leur nature la plus profonde et s’ils consistent ou non en realites
du mEme type (ror, p. 71). He envisages a ‘dialogue’ with linguists on relations
between language and society (p. go). One may recall Durkheim’s comprehen-
sion of the ever increasing superiority of linguistics among social sciences and
his paternal admonition to build up a linguistic sociology (cf. 3). Until now,
however, the initial steps in this direction were taken precisely by linguists, as,
for instance, in the stimulating attempts towards a correlation of language and