The Seventh Function of Language

by Laurent Binet

  Each time you formulate a phrase, you are subconsciously practicing these two operations. The paradigmatic axis uses your hard disk, if you like, and the syntagmatic your processor. (Although I doubt whether Bayard knows much about computers.)

  But in this particular case that is not what interests us.

  (Bayard grumbles.)

  Jakobson also summarized the process of communication with an outline that consists of the following elements: the sender, the receiver, the message, the context, the channel, and the code. It was from this outline that he drew the functions of language.

  Jacques Bayard has no desire to learn more, but for the sake of the investigation he has to understand at least the broad outlines. So here are the functions:

  • The “referential” function is the first and most obvious function of language. We use language to speak about something. The words used refer to a certain context, a certain reality, which one must provide information about.

  • The “emotive” or “expressive” function is aimed at communicating the presence and position of the sender in relation to his or her message: interjections, modal adverbs, hints of judgment, use of irony, and so on. The way the sender expresses a piece of information referring to an exterior subject gives information about the sender. This is the “I” function.

  • The “conative” function is the “you” function. It is directed toward the receiver. It is principally performed with the imperative or the vocative, i.e., the interpellation of whoever is being addressed: “Soldiers, I am satisfied with you!,” for example. (And remember, by the way, that a phrase is hardly ever reducible to a single function, but generally combines several. When he addresses his troops after Austerlitz, Napoleon marries the emotive function—“I am satisfied”—with the conative—“Soldiers/with you!”)

  • The “phatic” function is the most amusing. This is the function that envisages communication as an end in itself. When you say “hello” on the telephone, you are saying nothing more than “I’m listening,” i.e., “I am in a situation of communication.” When you chat for hours in a bar with your friends, when you talk about the weather or last night’s soccer game, you are not really interested in the information per se, but you talk for the sake of talking, without any objective other than making conversation. In other words, this function is the source of the majority of our verbal communications.

  • The “metalinguistic” function is aimed at verifying that the sender and the receiver understand each other, i.e., that they are using the same code. “You understand?,” “You see what I mean?,” “You know?,” “Let me explain…”; or, from the receiver’s point of view, “What are you getting at?,” “What does that mean?,” etc. Everything related to the definition of a word or the explanation of a development, everything linked to the process of learning a language, all references to language, all metalanguage, is the domain of the metalinguistic function. A dictionary’s sole function is metalinguistic.

  • And finally, the last function is the “poetic” function. This considers language in its aesthetic dimension. Plays on the sounds of words, alliteration, assonance, repetition, echo or rhythm effects, all belong to this function. We find it in poems, of course, but also in songs, oratory, newspaper headlines, advertising, and political slogans.

  Jacques Bayard lights a cigarette and says, “That’s six.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That’s six functions.”

  “Ah … yes. Quite.”

  “Isn’t there a seventh function?”

  “Well, uh … apparently, there is, yes…”

  Simon smiles stupidly.

  Bayard wonders out loud what Simon is being paid for. Simon reminds him that he did not ask for anything and that he is there against his will, on the express orders of a fascist president who sits at the head of a police state.

  Nevertheless, after thinking about it, or rather after rereading Jakobson, Simon Herzog does come up with a possible seventh function, designated as the “magic or incantatory function,” whose mechanism is described as “the conversion of a third person, absent or inanimate, to whom a conative message is addressed.” And Jakobson gives as an example a Lithuanian magical spell: “May this stye dry up, tfu tfu tfu tfu.” Yeah yeah yeah, thinks Simon.

  He also mentions this incantation from northern Russia: “Water, queen of rivers, aurora! Take the sadness beyond the blue sea, to the bottom of the sea, and never let it weigh down the happy heart of God’s servant…” And, for good measure, a citation from the Bible: “Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed” (Joshua 10:12).

  Fair enough, but that all sounds pretty anecdotal. You can’t really consider it a separate function; at most, it is a slightly crazy use of the conative function for an essentially cathartic effect, poetic at best, but completely ineffective: the magical invocation works only in fairy tales, by definition. Simon is convinced that this is not the seventh function of language, and in any case Jakobson only mentions it in passing, in the interests of completeness, before returning to his serious analysis. The “magical or incantatory function”? A negligible curiosity. A nonsensical footnote. Nothing worth killing for, in any case.

  33

  “By the spirits of Cicero, tonight, let me tell you, my friends, it is going to rain enthymemes! I can see some have been revising their Aristotle, and I know some others who know their Quintilian, but will that be enough to overcome the lexical snares in the slalom race of syntax? Caw caw! The spirit of Corax is speaking to you. Glory to the founding fathers! Tonight, the victor will win a trip to Syracuse. As for the defeated … they will have their fingers trapped in the door. Well, it’s always better than your tongue … And don’t forget: today’s orators are tomorrow’s tribunes. Glory to the logos! Long live the Logos Club!”

  34

  Simon and Bayard are in a room that is half-laboratory, half-armory. In front of them, a man in a white coat is examining the mustachioed man’s pistol, which should have obliterated Simon’s brain. (“He’s Q,” thinks Simon.) The ballistics expert commentates as he inspects the weapon: “Nine millimeter; eight shots; double action; steel, finished in bronze, walnut butt; weight: 730 grams without the magazine.” It looks like a Walther PPK, he says, but the safety is the other way around: it’s a Makarov PM, a Soviet pistol. Except that …

  Firearms, the expert explains, are like electric guitars. Fender, for instance, is an American firm that produces the Telecaster used by Keith Richards or Jimi Hendrix’s Stratocaster, but there are also Mexican or Japanese models produced under franchise, which are replicas of the original U.S. version: cheaper and generally less well finished, although often well-made.

  This Makarov is a Bulgarian, not a Russian, model, which is probably why it jammed: the Russian models are very reliable, the Bulgarian copies slightly less so.

  “Now, you’re going to laugh, Superintendent,” says the expert, showing him the umbrella that was removed from the man’s chest. “You see this hole? The point is hollow. It functions like a syringe, fed through the handle. All you have to do is press this trigger and it opens a valve that, with the aid of a compressed air cylinder, releases the liquid. The mechanism is impressively simple. It’s identical to the one used to eliminate Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident, two years ago in London. You remember?” Superintendent Bayard does indeed remember that the murder had been attributed to the Bulgarian secret services. At the time, they were using ricin. But now they have a stronger poison, botulinum toxin, which acts by blocking neuromuscular transmission, thus provoking muscle paralysis and causing death in a matter of minutes, either by asphyxia or by stopping the heart.

  Bayard, looking pensive, fiddles with the umbrella’s mechanism.

  Would Simon Herzog happen to know any Bulgarians in the academic world?

  Simon thinks.

  Yes, he does know one.

  35

  The
two Michels, Poniatowski and d’Ornano, have reported for duty in the president’s office. Giscard stands anxiously by the ground-floor window, looking out on the Élysée Gardens. As d’Ornano is smoking, Giscard asks him for a cigarette. Poniatowski, sitting in one of the luxurious armchairs in the informal part of the office, has poured himself a whiskey, which he puts down on the coffee table in front of him. He speaks first: “I talked to my contacts, who are in touch with Andropov.” Giscard says nothing because, like all men with this much power, he expects his employees to save him the bother of asking important questions. So Poniatowski replies to the silent question: “According to them, the KGB is not involved.”

  Giscard: “What makes you think that opinion is credible?”

  Ponia: “Several things. The most convincing being that in the short term they would not have any use for such a document. At a political level.”

  Giscard: “Propaganda is critical in those countries. The document could be very useful to them.”

  Ponia: “I doubt it. You can’t really say that Brezhnev has encouraged freedom of expression since he succeeded Khrushchev. There are no debates in the USSR, or only within the Party, and the public aren’t aware of those. So what counts is not the power of persuasion but the relative strengths of political forces.”

  D’Ornano: “But it’s perfectly imaginable that Brezhnev or another member of the Party might want to use it internally. The central committee is a vipers’ nest. It would be a considerable asset.”

  Ponia: “I can’t imagine Brezhnev wanting to assert his preeminence in that way. He doesn’t need to. The opposition is nonexistent. The system is locked in place. And no Central Committee member could order such an operation for his own profit without the authorities being informed.”

  D’Ornano: “Except Andropov.”

  Ponia (irritated): “Andropov is a shadowy figure. But he has more power as head of the KGB than he would have in any other position. I can’t see him embarking on a political adventure.”

  D’Ornano (ironic): “True. Shadowy figures rarely do things like that. Talleyrand and Fouché had no political ambitions at all, did they?”

  Ponia: “Well, they didn’t realize those ambitions.”

  D’Ornano: “That’s debatable. At the Congress of Vienna—”

  Giscard: “All right. What else?”

  Ponia: “It seems highly improbable that the operation would have been carried out by the Bulgarian services without the approval of their big brother. On the other hand, it is possible to envisage Bulgarian agents selling their services to private interests. It is up to us to determine the nature of those private interests.”

  D’Ornano: “Do the Bulgarians have that little control over their men?”

  Ponia: “Corruption is widespread. No part of society is free of it, least of all the intelligence services.”

  D’Ornano: “Secret agents working freelance in their spare time? Frankly…”

  Ponia: “Secret agents working for several employers? It’s not exactly unheard of.” (He drains his glass.)

  Giscard (stubbing out his cigarette in a little ivory hippopotamus that serves as an ashtray): “Agreed. Anything else?”

  Ponia (leaning back in his chair, arms behind his head): “Well, it turns out Carter’s brother is a Libyan agent.”

  Giscard (surprised): “Which one? Billy?”

  Ponia: “Andropov seems to have got this from the CIA. Apparently, he thought it was hilarious.”

  D’Ornano (getting them back to the subject at hand): “So, what are we going to do? If in doubt, wipe them out?”

  Ponia: “The president does not need the document. He just needs to know that the opposition doesn’t have it.”

  As far as I know, no one has ever pointed out that Giscard’s famous speech impediment became more pronounced during moments of embarrassment or pleasure. He says: “Of coursh, of coursh … But if we could find it … or at leasht locate it, and if poshible, get our handzh on it, I would resht more eazhily. For the shake of Fransh. Imagine if thish document fell into, uh, the wrong handzh … Not that … But, well…”

  Ponia: “Then we have to make Bayard’s mission clearer: get hold of the document, without letting anyone read it. Let’s not forget that that young linguist he’s hired is capable of deciphering it and therefore using it. Or of ensuring that every copy of it is destroyed. [He gets up and walks over to the drinks table, muttering.] A lefty. Bound to be a lefty…”

  D’Ornano: “But how can we know if the document has already been used?”

  Ponia: “According to my information, if someone used it we would know about it pretty damn quickly…”

  D’Ornano: “What if they were discreet? Kept a low profile?”

  Giscard (leaning against the sideboard under the Delacroix, and fingering the Legion of Honor medals in their boxes): “That doesn’t seem very plausible. Power, of whatever kind, is intended to be used.”

  D’Ornano (curious): “Is that true for the atomic bomb?”

  Giscard (professorial): “Especially the atomic bomb.”

  The mention of a possible end to the world plunges the president into a light daydream for a moment. He thinks of the A71 highway which must cross the Auvergne, of the mayor’s office in Chamalières, of the France over which he rules. His two employees wait respectfully for him to start speaking again. “In the meantime, all our actions should be governed by a single objective: preventing the left from gaining power.”

  Ponia (sniffing a bottle of vodka): “As long as I’m alive, there will be no Communist ministers in France.”

  D’Ornano (lighting a cigarette): “Exactly. You should slow down if you want to get through the election.”

  Ponia (raising his glass): “Na zdrowie!”

  36

  “Comrade Kristoff … You know, of course, who is the greatest politician of the twentieth century?”

  Emil Kristoff was not summoned to Lubyanka Square, but he would have preferred that.

  “Naturally, Yuri Vladimirovich. It’s Georgi Dimitrov.”

  The faux-intellectual tenor of his meeting with Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, in an old bar located in a basement, as nearly all the bars in Moscow are, is not designed to reassure him, and the fact that they are in a public place changes nothing. You can be arrested in a public place. You can even die in a public place. He is well placed to know this.

  “A Bulgarian.” Andropov laughs. “Who would have believed it?”

  The waiter puts two small glasses of vodka and two large glasses of orange juice on the table, with two fat gherkins on a little plate, and Kristoff wonders if this is a clue. Around him, people smoke, drink, and talk loudly, and that is the first rule when you want to be sure that a conversation cannot be overheard: meet in a noisy place, full of random sounds, so that any microphones hidden nearby cannot isolate a particular voice. If you are in an apartment, you should run a bath. But the simplest solution is to go out for a drink. Kristoff observes the customers’ faces and spots at least two agents in the room, but he presumes there must be more.

  Andropov continues on the subject of Dimitrov: “If you think about it, it was there for all to see during the Reichstag trial. The conflict between Göring, who is summoned as a witness, and Dimitrov, in the dock, anticipated the fascist aggression to come, the heroic Communists’ resistance, and our final victory. That trial is highly symbolic of the superiority of communism from every point of view, political and moral. Dimitrov is majestic and mocking, and masters the historical dialectic perfectly, even as he risks his life, faced with the angry, fist-waving Göring … What a spectacle! Göring, who just happens to be president of the Reichstag, prime minister and minister of the interior for Prussia. But Dimitrov reverses their roles, and it is Göring who has to respond to his questions. Dimitrov completely demolishes him. Göring is furious: he stamps his feet, like a little boy who’s been told he can’t have any dessert. Facing him, imperious in the dock, Dimitrov reveals the madness
of the Nazis to the world. Even the president of the tribunal realizes it. It’s hilarious because you’d think he was asking Dimitrov to forgive fat Göring’s behavior. He says to him—I remember this as if it were yesterday—‘Given that you are spouting Communist propaganda, you should not be surprised if the witness is so agitated.’ Agitated! And then Dimitrov says he is fully satisfied with the prime minister’s response. Ha ha! What a man! What a talent!”

  Kristoff sees allusions and deeper meanings everywhere, but he tries to keep things in perspective because he knows that his paranoia makes it difficult for him to assess the KGB chairman’s words correctly. All the same, the fact that he was summoned to Moscow is, indisputably, a clue in itself. He does not wonder if Andropov knows something. He wonders what he knows. And that is a much harder question to answer.

  “Back then, people all over the world said: ‘There is only one man left in Germany, and that man is Bulgarian.’ I knew him, Emil, were you aware of that? A born orator. A master.”

  While he listens to Andropov praising the great Dimitrov, Comrade Kristoff assesses his own situation. There is nothing more uncomfortable for someone preparing to lie than being uncertain how much the person he is about to lie to knows. At some point, he realizes, he will have to gamble.

  And that moment arrives: ending his disquisition on Dimitrov, Andropov asks his Bulgarian counterpart for clarification on the latest reports that have reached his desk in Lubyanka Square. What exactly is this operation in Paris?

  So, here we are. Kristoff feels his heart accelerate, but is careful not to breathe more quickly. Andropov bites into a gherkin. He must decide now. Either admit the operation or claim to know nothing about it. But this second option has the disadvantage of making you look incompetent, which, in the world of intelligence, is never a good idea. Kristoff knows exactly how a good lie works: it must be drowned in an ocean of truth. Being 90 percent truthful enables you to render the 10 percent you are attempting to conceal more credible, while reducing the risks of contradicting yourself. You buy time and you avoid becoming muddled. When you lie, you must lie about one point—and one only—and be perfectly honest about the rest. Emil Kristoff leans toward Andropov and says: “Comrade Yuri, you know Roman Jakobson? He’s a compatriot of yours. He wrote some very nice things about Baudelaire.”