Search

This article focuses on linguistic forms or codes. Changes in the form of the social relation affect both the planning procedures used in the preparation of speech and the orientation of the listener. Different forms of social relations can generate quite different speech-systems or linguistic codes by affecting the planning procedures. These different speech-systems or codes create different orders of relevance and relation for their speakers. Two general types of code can be distinguished: elaborated and restricted. These codes can be defined in terms of the probability of predicting for any one speaker which syntactic elements are to be used to organize meaning across a representative range of speech. They themselves are functions of a particular form of social relationship. The pure form of a restricted code would be one where all words and hence the organizing structure are wholly predictable for speakers and listeners. It defines the form of the social relationship by restricting the verbal signaling of individual differences. Individuals mainly relate to each other through the social position or status they occupy. An elaborated code, where prediction is much less possible at the syntactic level, is likely to arise in that social relationship which raises the tension in its members to select a verbal arrangement from their linguistic resources which closely fits specific referents.

In this article, the author holds the view that language is one of the most important intervening variables between the individual and behavior. Certainly implications of a given form of language use are continuously reinforced from the beginning of speech, perhaps even before. The child understands before it can speak. The linguistic form is a powerful conditioner of what is learnt, how it is learnt and influences future learning. In this article, the behavior which is facilitated by a public language, has been analyzed. One major implication of the view held here, which is ethical and political rather than sociological, is that the changing of a form of language use, in this case a public language, involves something more than might be thought as first sight. A public language contains its own aesthetic, a simplicity and directness of expression, emotionally virile, pithy and powerful and a metamorphic range of considerable force and appropriateness. A change in the mode of language used, involves the whole personality of the individual, the very character of his social relationships, his points of reference, emotional and logical, and his conception of himself.