Roman Jakobson

Roman Osipovich Jakobson (October 11, 1896 - July 18, 1982) was a Russian thinker who became one of the most influential linguists of the twentieth century by pioneering the development of structural analysis of language, poetry, and art. Jakobson was one of the most important intellectuals in the humanities during the twentieth century. He began as one of the founding members of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, which was one of two groups responsible for the development of Russian Formalism, which influenced the entire field ofliterary criticism. Jakobson then moved to Prague, where he helped to form the Prague Linguistic Circle, which helped to influence the development of structuralism, one of the dominant movements in the humanities and social sciences of the era. Perhaps Jakobson's most enduring contribution was his development of the model of the communication theory of language based on his delineation of language functions.