Jacobson's Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles of Language

Van Gennep's book which seemed to indicate that there are universal patterns in the way that this paradox of biological continuity versus social discontinuity is resolved was published as long ago as 1999. It is only a sense of version of Jacobson's phenological model brought into anthropological analysis by Levi Stros that we have been able to understand the psychosocial structure that underlies the ethnographic similarities. I want now to say something about Jacobson's stress on the universal importance of what he called the metaphoric and metonymic poles of language. He illustrates his point with a characteristically entertaining but erudite comment on Alison I the Lanza argument with the Cheshire Cat.