Jackobson’s Communication Model in Brief

Jakobson's model of the functions of language distinguishes six elements, or factors of

communication, that are necessary for communication to occur: (1) context,
(2) addresser (sender), (3) addressee (receiver), (4) contact, (5) common code and (6)
message.

The communication functions

Based on the Organon-Model by Karl Bühler, Jakobson distinguishes six

communication functions, each associated with a dimension of the communication
process:

Each factor is the focal point of a relation, or function, that operates between the
message and the factor. The functions are the following, in order:

1. referential (= contextual information) (“The Earth is round”).

2. aesthetic/poetic (= auto-reflection) (“Smurf”).

3. emotive (= self-expression) (“Yuck!”).

4. conative (= vocative or imperative addressing of receiver) (“Come here”).

5. phatic (= checking channel working) (“Hello?”).

6. metalingual (= checking code working) (“What do you mean by ‘krill’?”).

When we analyze the functions of language for a given unit (such as a word, a text or an
image), we specify to which class or type it belongs (e.g., a textual or pictorial genre),
which functions are present/absent, and the characteristics of these functions, including
the hierarchical relations and any other relations that may operate between them.

One of the six functions is always the dominant function in a text and usually related to
the type of text. In poetry, the dominant function is the poetic function: the focus is on
the message itself. The true hallmark of poetry is according to Jakobson “the projection
of the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection to the axis of combination”.
Very broadly speaking, this implies that poetry successfully combines and integrates
form and function, that poetry turns the poetry of grammar into the grammar of poetry,
so to speak. A famous example of this principle is the political slogan "I like Ike."
Jakobson's theory of communicative functions was first published in "Closing
Statements: Linguistics and Poetics" (in Thomas A. Sebeok, Style In Language,
Cambridge Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1960, pp. 350–377).