ABSTRACT
Both connotative signification and metalanguage are different modes of constructing meaning, capable of producing the communication outcome of reshaping the world. Many scholars have turned to the theorizing by Roman Jakobson, the renowned Russian-American linguist and one of the founders of the Prague school of linguistic theory, as the definitive account on the issue. In the example of the children's experiment that Jakobson cites, he believes that a metonymic relationship exists between the hut and poverty. Jakobson also believes that the faculties of selecting and substituting, that is, the ability to create substitutive metaphors, are the factors that affect metalanguage behavior. Jakobson has been quite inconsistent when it comes to the question whether similarity and contiguity are related to the semantic relationship or to the positional relationship between terms (signs), and those ambiguities and equivocations on his part are liable to trigger misunderstandings.
