“Slotting Jakobson into the social semiotic approach to ‘verbal art’: A modest proposal”

Miller (2010a, b, c) takes up the defense of the inadequately valued social semiotic, or Hasanian (but also Hallidayan), approach to ‘verbal art’, or the ‘literature text’ (Hasan 1985/89; 2007). Parenthetically as it were, this work also suggests that what Jakobson (1960; 1966; 1968) identifies as the empirical evidence of his ‘poetic function’, ie, Grammatical Parallelism (henceforth GP), should be incorporated into the model. The efficacy of focusing on such marked reiteration of linguistic patterns has emerged from the teaching of numerous courses in stylistics over the years and has been theorized and demonstrated (cf. Miller 2007). This paper would argue the case more deliberately, visibly, and convincingly. I begin with a cursory account of Hasan’s agon against the view of literature as but one more text type, about which there is nothing particularly ‘special’. I continue with the cornerstone of the proposition being put forth here: what Fowler (1986) baptized ‘the Mukarovsky-Jakobson theory’, delineating Jakobson’s contribution to the theory and arguing for correspondences between his ‘poetic function’ and Hasan’s approach, as well as against her reservations. Section 4 then briefly illustrates how ‘pervasive’ GP (Jakobson 1966: 423) functions as Hasan claims patterning in verbal art must: as a consistent and motivated foregrounding device which symbolically articulates the ‘theme’ of a literature text. In closing, the proposal is succinctly wrapped up.