Roman Osipovich Jakobson

(Роман Осипович Якобсон) (Russian-American linguist and literary theorist, 1896–1982). One of the most influential linguists of the twentieth century, Jakobson pioneered the development of structural linguistics and the structural analysis of language, poetry, and art. He was close to the Russian Formalists and Futurists during his youth, and in the 1930s came into contact with the work of Saussure, whose Langue/Parole distinction and theory of the sign laid the foundation for so much structuralist work. Jakobson's model of language that emphasizes its function along the great twin axes of metaphor and metonymy would virtually define structuralism for French thinkers during the twentieth century, directly informing the semiology of Roland Barthes and the structural reinterpretation of Freud's theories by Jacques Lacan. Jakobson published some 650 books and papers dealing with poetics, philology, linguistics, folklore and slavic studies.