The thesis aims to elucidate the relations between Freud's mechanisms of the unconscious, such as displacement and condensation, and rhetorical figures, especially as conceptualized in Jakobson and Lacan's theoretical approaches. The first part of the thesis presents a detailed analysis and comparison of Freud, Jakobson and Lacan's concepts, which demonstrates the inappropriateness of simple analogies between Freud's mechanisms of the unconscious and rhetorical figures, such as metaphor and metonymy. Freudian displacement is shown as corresponding to shifts in the syntagmatic as well as paradigmatic axis, while the concept of condensation also necessitates the discussion of its inversion - which is shown to be analogous to Jakobson's poetic function. The mechanisms of the unconscious can therefore be regarded as "rhetorical operations" as conceptualized in Groupe [mi]'s theory of rhetorical figures, that is as elementary operations, which operate at different linguistic levels. Thus conceived analysis is further developed and complemented in the second part of the thesis by the presentation and analysis of Freud's classification of joke techniques as presented in Jokes and their relationship to the unconscious.
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