A Jacobsonian Approach Toward Emotional Subjectivity Of Poetic Texts

If there exists an entire and united experienceof humanbeings, the only way to approach it is by poetry; On the contrary, if there doesn’t exist one, the only way to create one is also by poetry.——American Philosopher RawsonAs a hot research topic in the field of linguistics, poetic meaning has always been one of the focusedtopics of the scholars’ study, many scholars have already studied on the poetic meaning from different angles. Withmore and more great contributionswhich have done by linguists towards the subjectivity of language, the author found thatthe subjectivity theory can be also used to analyze the subjectivity of poetic meaning; while refer to poetry analysis, Roman Jacobson’s poetic function theory framework isof great significance as a guide.According to Jacobson’s interpretation on language function, whenfocusingon the information,i.e. the symbol itselfof the language, the poetic function is produced. Jacobson, put forward the viewpoint that "the poetic function isthe equivalence principle cast from the selection axis onto a combination axis", combines linguistics with poetic study, is his great contribution to linguistics.The core of his poetic theory,the content of the equivalence principleand parallel structure which formed on the basis ofthe equivalence principle are widely adopted by researchers, the equivalence principle is promoted to the basic means of structure and units of the poetry. Jacobson’s analysis on poetry may seem complicated, but it helps to explain the essence of the poetry text and generation mechanism.Therefore, as a common feature represented by natural languages, subjectivityconcerns the expression of self and the representation of a speaker’s(or,more generally, a locutionary agent’s) perspective or point of view in discourse--what has been called a speaker’s imprint. According to this meaning, the subjectivity as a guide to study on poetic meaning has a very important significance.This thesis is based on the achievements which have done by Jacobson and supplemented by other scholars’ relative results, let the emotional subjectivity of poetic meaning as research purpose, from the three dimensions of language research sound, form and meaning as a starting point. On the one hand, to make deeper explanation and evaluation on the concepts of Jacobson’s poetic theory, like selection, combination andequivalence in all levels. On the other hand, this thesis apply the Jacobson’s poetic theory to make a series analysis on subjective meaning of several Chinese and Foreign poems, and hoping to explore the universality of the theory to emotional subjectivity of poetry.