Jakobson: Six Lectures Sound & Meaning

One of the founders of the Prague School of Linguistics was a Russian-born American, Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). This article presents a summary of his famous “Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning” (1942). In the lectures, he argues that acoustic phonetics (sounds) is a quite significant aspect in communication because of its intimate relationship with meaning. Yet, people have been paying more attention to articulatory phonetics or how sounds are produced. The article also discusses the strengths, weaknesses, and contributions of the lectures to TEFL or SLA.