next up in Jakobson:

When you've got nothing more to not say about the phatic function of language, sometimes you start tapping your feet and looking around and stumble on some pretty cool naturally occurring demonstrations of the poetic function.*
(courtesy of HB)



* Poetic function: "The set (Einstellung) toward the message as such, focus on the message for its own sake” (69). Not to be confined to (or confused with) poetry; “The poetic function is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant, determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as a subsidiary, accessory constituent” (69). The poetic function depends on selection and combination. “The selection is produced on the basis of equivalence, similarity and dissimilarity, synonymy and antonymy, while the combination, the build-up of the sequence, is based on contiguity. The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination. Equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence. ...in metalanguage the sequence is used to build an equation, whereas in poetry the equation is used to build a sequence” (71).