Halliday: Language and the Social Man
 Bernstien - codes - students have with them "restrictive code" - context dependent/ insider lanuage -assumptions/ shared knowledge
"elaborate code" - more information/ more detail is provided - FUNCTION
learning codes - their codes aren't valued - doesn't function in ways
Ong
8
"The 'environment' is social as weli as physical, and a state of wellbeing,
which depends on harmony with the environment, demands harmony of
both kinds. The nature of this state of wellbeing is what environmental
studies are about. Ten years ago we first came to hear of 'ergonomics', the
study and control of the environment in which people work;"

9
social pollution:
"pn~judice and animosity of race, cy:lture and class. These cannot be
engineered away"

social engineering - dangerous "but because it implies that the social environment can be fashioned
like the physical one, by methods of demolition and construction, if only the
plans and the machines are big enough and complicated enough. Some of the
unforwnate effects of this kind of thinking have been seen from time to time
in the field of language and education."

"'Education' may sound less exciting than social engineering, but it is an
older concept and one that is more relevant to our needs. If the engineers
and the town planners can mould the physical environment, it is the teachers
who exert the most influence on the social environment. They do so not by
manipulating the social structure (which would be the engineering
approach) but by playing a major part in the process whereby a human being
becomes social man. The school is the main line of defence against pollution
in the human environment; and we should not perhaps dismiss the notion of
'defence' too lightly, because defensive action is often precisely what is
needed."

" In the development of the child as a social being, language has the central
role. Language is the main channel through which the patterns of living are
transmitted to him, through which he learns to act as a member of a 'society'
-in and through the various social groups, the family, the neighbourhood,
and so on- and to adopt its 'culture', its modes of thought and action, its
beliefs and its values."

"All this takes place through the medium
of language. And it is not from the language of the classroom, still less that of
courts of law, of moral tracts or of textbooks of sociology, that the child
learns about the culture he was born into. The striking fact is that it is the
most ordinary everyday uses of language, with parents, brothers and sisters,
neighbourhood children, in the home, in the street and the park, in the shops
and the trains and the buses, that serve to transmit, to the child, the essential
qualities of society and the nature of social being."
10
"How else can one look at language except in a social context?
In the last resort, it is true that the existence oflanguage implies the existence
of social man; but this does not by itself determine the point of vantage from
which language is being approached"

making sense of language - social and inter-organism (brain structure etc.)

chart - interdisciplines

12
"The other two headings derive from the distinction we"have just been
drawing between the intra-organism perspective, language as knowledge,
and the inter-organism perspective, language as behaviour. These both lead
us outward from language as a system, the former into the region of psychological
studies, the latter into sociology and related fields. So in putting
language into the context of 'language and social man', we are taking up one
of the options that are open for the relating of language study to other fields
of inquiry. This, broadly, is the sociolinguistic option; and the new subject of
sociolinguistics that has come into prominence lately is a recognition of the
fact that language and society -or, as we prefer to think of it, language and
social man - is a" unified conception, and needs to be understood and
investigated as a whole."

"The contrast is
rather that of social versus psychophysiological, the distinction which we
have attempted to draw in terms of inter-organism and intra-organism
perspectives"

"When we. refer to social man, we mean the individual considered as a
single entity, rather than as an assemblage of parts. The distinction we are
drawing here is that between the behaviour of that individual, his actions and
interactions with his environment (especially that part of his environment
which consists of other individuals), on the one hand, and on the other hand
his biological nature, and in particular the internal structure of his brain"

13
" Langu~ge can be considered from either of these points of view; the first is
what we called on the diagram 'language as behaviour', the second '•language
a:s knowledge'. 'Language and social man' means language as a function of
the whole man; hence language man to man (inter-organism), or language as
human behaviour."
complimentary

language always occurs in a context "We do not simply 'know' our mother
tongue as an abstract system of vocal signals, or as if it was some sort of a
grammar book with a dictionary attached. We know it in the sense of
knowing how to use it; we know how to communicate with other people,
how to choose forms of language that are appropriate to the type of situation
we find ourselves in, and so on. All this can be expressed as a form of
knowledge: we know how to behave linguistically."

"
behaviour as a type of knowledge:;
so that although one's attention is focused on the social aspects of
language -on language as communication between organisms -one is still
asking what is essentially an intra-organism kind of question: how does the
individual know how to behave in this way? We might refer to this as
psychosociolinguistics: it is the external behaviour of the organism looked at
from the point of view of the internal mechanisms which control it."

"
It is true that .
the individual's potential for linguistic interaction with others implies certain
things about the internal make-up of the individual himself. But the converse
is also true. The fact that the brain has the capacity to store. language
and use it for effective communication implies that communication takes
place: that the individual has a 'behaviour potential' which characterizes his
interaction with other individualsof his species."
14
"Let us start with the notion of the
individual human organism, the human being as a biological specimen. Like
the individual in many other species, he is destined to become one of a
group; but unlike those of all other species, he achieves this-not wholly, but
critically -through language. It is by means of language that the 'human
being' becomes one of a group of 'people'. But 'people', in turn, consist of
'persons'; by virtue of his participation in a group the individual is no longer
simply a biological specimen of humanity- he is a person. Again language is
the essential element in the process, since it is largely the linguistic interchange
with the group that determines· the status of the individuals and
shapes them as persons."

Fascinating (Durkheim)
"In other words, instead of looking at the group as a derivation from and
extension of the biologically endowed mental power of the individual, we
explain the nature of the individual as a derivation from and exter1sion of his
participation in the group. Instead of starting inside the organism and
looking outwards, we can adopt a Durkheimian perspective and start from
outside the organism in order to look inwards."

"
A society, on the
other hand, does not consist of participants but of relations, and these
relations define social roles. Being a member of society means occupying a
social role; and it is again by means of language that a 'person' becomes
potentially the occupant of a social role."

15

"Social roles are combinable, and the individual; as a member of a society;
oecupies not just one role but many at a time, always through the medium of
language. Language is again a necessary condition for this final element in
the pfrocess of the development of· the individual, from human being to
person to what we may call 'personality', a personality being interpreted as a
role complex." What do other identities (moving/ making art etc. mean?)
16
Functional view - what can we do with language?
"language acquisition" - problematic - deficit theory

 17
All humans have ability to learn language -
nativist: specific language learning faculty (blueprint of language) - fit patterns he hears into framework he already possesses.
environmentalist:
" The environmentalist
view considers. that language learning is not fundamentally distinct from
other kinds of learning; it depends on those same mental faculties that are
involved in all aspects of the child's learning processes. Rather _than having
buil:~ into his genetic makeup a set of concrete universals of language, what
the child has is the ability to process certain highly abstract types of cognitive
relation which underlie (among other things) the linguistic system; the very
specific properties of language are not innate, and therefore the child is more
dept::ndent on his environment - on the language he hears around him,
together with the contexts in which it is uttered- for the successful learning
of his mother tongue." Huge implications in teaching
18
"Moreimportant than the grammatical shape of-what the child hears,·
however, i~ the fact that it isJunctionally related to observablefeatures of
tbe situation around· him. This consideration allows us to give another
account of language development that is not dependent on any particular
psycholinguistictheory, an account that is functional and,Sociological:rather,
than structural and psychological. The two are not in competition; they are
about different things. A functional theory is not a theory about the ment-al:
processes involved in the learning o.f the mother tongue; it is a theory about
the social processes involved. As we expressed ·it in the first section,. it is
concerned with language between people· (inter-organism), arid therefore
learning to speak is interpreted as the individual's mastery of a behaviour
potential. In this perspective, language is a form of interaction, and it is
learnt through interaction; this, essentially, is what makes it possible for a
cultur~ to be transmitted from one generation to the next."
19
"
 The production of a sound for the purpos 'of attracting
attention is language,. on€e:we have reason to assert that 'attracting attention~
is a· meaning that fits in with the functional potential of language at this
stage Qf development." Child "learns how to mean"

1. Instrumental ('I want'): satisfying material needs
2 Regulatory ('do as .J tell you'): controlling the- behaviour of'others
3- Interactional ('me and you'): getting alongwith other people
4 Personal ('here I come'): identifying and expressing the self
5 Heuristic ('tell me why'): exploring the world a!ound and inside one

20
6 Imaginative ('let's pretend'): creating a world of one's own
7 Informative ('I've got something to tell you'): communicating new
information.

"English language, were used
to convey these kinds of intention to obtain goods or services that he
required (instrumental), to influence the behaviour of those closest to him
(regulatory), to maintain his emotional ties with them (interactional), and so
on. The meanings that he can express at this stage - the number of different
things that he can ask for, for example - are naturally very restricted; but he
has internalized the fact that language serves these purposes, and it is
significant that for each of them he has one generalized expression, meaning
'I want that' or 'do that!' etc., where the interpretation is given by the
situation (e.g. 'I want that spoon' or 'go on singing'), as well as a number of
specific expessions, very few at first but soon growing, and soon becoming
independent of the presence of the object or other visible sign of his intent.
So by adopting a functional standpoint we can go back to the beginning of
the child's language development, reaching beyond the point where he has
started to master structures, beyond even his first words, if by 'words' we
mean items derived from the adult language;"

"Just as we cannot adequately represent the
sounds he makes by spelling them, either in the orthography of the mother
tongue or even in phonetic script, because the: system which these symbols
impose is too detailed and specific, so also we cannot adequately represent
the meanings the child expresses in terms of adult grammar and vocabulary.
The child's experience differs so widely from that of the adult that there is
only a very partial correspondence between his meanings and those that the
adult is predisposed to recognize. But if his utterances are interpreted in the
light of particular functions, which are recognizable to the adult as plausible
ways of using language, it becomes possible to bridge the: gap between them
-and in this way to show why the infant's linguistic system ultimately evolves
and develops into that of the adult, which is otherwise: the most puzzling
aspect of the language development process. By the time he reached the age
of 18 months, Nigel could use language effectively in the instrumental,
regulatory, intractional and personal functions, and was beginning to use it
for pretend-play (the 'imaginative' function), and also heuristically, for the
purpose of exploring the environment"
Does this happen in every culture? How can this be proved?
21
4 Language and Social structure

Move from functional to socio-linguistic view of language:
about socio-linguistic:
"rather a perspective which in terms of the earlier
discussion would be inter-organism. Language is being regarded as the
encoding of a 'behaviour potential' into a 'meaning potential'; that is,
as a means of expressing what the human organism 'can do', in interaction
with other human organisms, by turning it into what he 'can mean'. What
he can mean (the semantic system) is, in turn, encoded into what he 'can
say' (the lexicogrammatical system, or grammar and voc·abulary); to use
our own folk-linguistic terminology, meanings are expressed in wordings.
Wordings are, finally, recoded into sounds (it would be nice if we could
say 'soundings') or spellings (the phonological and orthographic systems).
Terms like meaning, wording and spelling are so familiar in everyday
speech that we are hardly aware of them as ways of talking about language."

"This perspective is valuable to the linguist because it affords an insight into
why language is as it is. There is no a priori reason why human language
should have taken just the evolutionary path that it has taken and no other;
our brains could have produced a symbolic system of quite a different kind.
But if we: consider what language is required to do for us," (I wonder if it has...)

General ways language fits into societies:
1. Language has to interpret the whole of our experience, reducing the
indefinitely varied phenomena of the world around us, and also of the world
inside us, the processes of our own consciousness, to a manageable number
of classes of phenomena: types of processes, events and actions, classes of
objects, people and institutions, and the like.I don't think you can do that with language "whole"?
2. Language has to express certain elementary logical relations, like 'and'
and 'or' and 'if', as well as those created by language itself such as 'namely',
'says' and 'means'.How does this differ in different cultures (logical relations)
3. Language has to express our participation, as speakers, in the speech
situation; the roles we take on ourselves and impose on others.; our wishes,
feelings, attitudes and judgements.
· .. 4. Language has to .do all these things simultaneously, in away which
relates what is being said to the context in which it is being said, both to what
has been said before and to the 'context of situation'; in other words~ it has to
be capable of being organized as relevant discourse, not jqsLas. words.and
sentences in a grammar-book or dictionary.

22
" It is the demands posed by . the • service . of these functions which have
moulded the shape of language and fixed.the course ·of its evolution." Evolution as functions


"The-first ooncerns'the language
they invent for_ themselves, on the basis of the set of elementary uses or
functions of language which reflect the developmental needs, potentialities
and achievements of the infant - instrumental, regulatory and so on; 'The
second concerns their transition t0 the adult language, a la.nguage yvhichi,js
still functionaLin its origins but where the concept of 'function' has undergone
a significant change: it is no longer simply synonymous with 'use', hut
has become:much more abstract, a kind of 'metafunction' through which allthe
innumerable concrete uses of: language in which the adult engages are
given symbolic expre~sion:in <!System~tic and finite form."

"unique inheritance"

biological similarites/ ecological differences
23
BUT - uniqueness  (individual) - qualified by reference to culture

"This is a matter of the linguistic
envit:onment, which is itself. part of the culture, but in a special sense.
Moreover he learns that dialectal variety of English which belongs to 'his
pa.rticular socioregional subculture: working-class London, urban middleclass:
Northern, rural Dorset and soon."  Reminds me of agriculture

"One school of~thoJ.Ight .has concentrated on the effect of the child's
linguistic environment -namely, the particular form of language he has
grown up to speak. In practice, since educational failure is usually associated
w,ith the urban lower working class, this means the particular socioregional
dialect; and we find two versions of the 'language failure' theory here,
sometimes known as the 'deficit theor-y' and the 'difference theory' . .Accordii1g
to' the deficit theory, t41e whole dialect is simply defective; it >lacks
some essential elements ..,.. .it is deJicient, 'perhaps, in sounds, or words, or
stn,Ict\lcres. Now this i~ not merely~ nonsense; it is dangerous nonsense;"

24
"So the difference theory resolves itself
into a question of prejudice: if the child fails as a result of differences
between his language and that of the school, it is not because there are
difficulties of understanding but because the child's variety of English
carries a social stigma: it is regarded by society as inferioL If 'society' here
includes the teacher, the child is, effectively, condemned to failure from the
start.  To. that extent, then, the difference theory, unlike the deficit theory, is at
least partially true: there are prejudices against certain varieties of English,
and they are shared by some teachers."
Fascinating:
(Bernstein)
"It is not the linguistic environment, in the sense of
which language or dialect the child learns to speak, that matters so much as
the cultural or subcultural environment as this is embodied in and transmitted
through the language. In other words, the 'language difference' may
be significant, but if so it is a difference of function rather than of form."

25
" it is not difficult to suppose an intimate connection
between language on the one hand and modes of thought and behaviour on
the other.
This view is associated first and foremost with the work of the great
American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf, who wrote 'An accepted pattern of
using words is often prior to certain lines of thinking and modes of
behaviour.'"
Laugh  a bit - out of 9 of us - so wildly different in politics - and yet so similar in terms of certain behaviors
Bernstein:
Bernstein (1971, 123) points out that, in
\Vhorf's thinking, 'the link between language, culture and habitual thought
i~ not mediated through the social structure', whereas his own theory
pllaces the emphasis on changes in the social structure as major factors in shaping
or changing a given culture through their effect on the consequences of fashions
of speaking. It shares with Wharf the controlling influence on experience
ascribed to 'frames of.consistency' involved in fashions of speaking. It differs
[from] Whorfby asserting that, in the context of a common language in the sense
of a general code, there will arise distinct linguistic forms, fashions of speaking,
which induce in their speakers different ways of relating to objects and persons.

language codes
26
" It becomes restr,ictive orify where
the soCial sthictufe:orients the child's think}ng away from the mode's'.of
~xperience thatthe school requires: To quote Bernstein again, 'the different
focusing of experience· .. ·.creates a major problem of educabil~ty only whe.re
the _sch'ool produces discontinuitY between its symbolic 0rders (lrtd thoseof
the :chifd' (1971, 183-4). In other'worcfs, the processes of betb111\ng ¢d_u:.:
catedreq'uire thtit. ihe chiid's meaning pot~ntiaL should: have. develop~d
along certain lines in certain' types of con:text, especially in relation.to the,
explon1tion~of the e·nviromneilt and of h1s own part in it. To what extent this
requlreme'ni fsiriherent in the very concept of education, and to w'hat extent
it is ~er,~ly a. feature of ed11c51tionas}t is at pres.{!n.t organiz~d in"

"as Bernstein puts it. Whether ~ child is .. so predisposed or .not turns
out not to be any innate property of the child as an individual, an inherent
limitation on his mental powers, as usedto be gerlerally assumed; it is merely
the· result of a mismatch between. his own·symbotic orders of meaning and
those .of.the school, . .a misma·toh that results from the different patterns of
socialization that characterize different: sections of society~ or: subcultures~·
and·which · are'in turn a· function of the underlying social reiations ~in· the
family and elsewhere. Mary Douglas says of Bernstein that he ·asks 'what·
structuring insocietyitselfcalls for its own appropriate structures of speech'
(19.72, S);·and she goes·on toadti 'A'commt>if:speech form transmits much
rnore''than words; it transmits·a hidden'baggage Ofshared assumptions', a
'collective consciousness that constitutes the social bond'."

"in Bernstein's words, 'There is
nothing, but nothing, in the· dialect as such~ which prevents a chird from
internalizing and learriing·to use univer:salistic meanings' (1971; 199), and
dialect isa·problem·onlyif it is made' a problem artificially by the prejudice
and ignorance of others. Ifis'mnch harder to become aware ofthesignificaht
differences~"

27
"Jn,essence, what seem~ to happen is this. The child first constructs a
language in the forlll pf a range of m~.aningsthat r~late dir~cily to certainsJf
~is basic. needs . .A.s time goes on, the rneanings become rriore complex, and
he replac:es this by a symbolic system-:- a semantic system- with struc:tural.
realizations -:based qn the_ language he hears around him~Jhis iswhatwe call
thi~ 'mqther tongue' ... Since th)s is learnt, and bas in.fa~t evolved, in the
service of the same basic functions,~it is, essentially,. a functional system; but
its functionality- is> now built in at a, very abstract level. This is what was
referred to at the beginning of this section, when I said that the adult
Hnguistic system has, in effect, the four generalizedJunctionai components;
or 'metafunctions', expe_rientiaJ, logical, interpersonal 4nd textual. These
for{Il the J:>asis for th'e organization. ofmeaning when the ~child moves from
h~s .. original protolangu;1ge. into language proper:·"

"But he· does notc.abandon the original concrete functional elements of the
system as he invented it. These still definethe purposes for which language is
used; and out of them evolve the social contexts and situation types that
makre up the patterns of use of language in ... daily life -:including those
contexts that Bernstein has shown to be critical in the socialization process.
Herein)ies the basis of the significant subcultural variation, that we have
been looking at. In which particular cpntexts of use will the child bring to
beaqvhichportions of the functional resources ofthesystem? Seen from a
linguistic point of view, the· different :codes', as· Bernstein calls them, are
different strategies of la11guage. ,u~e .."

28
Language potential
"The basic concept here is that of'context of situation', originally suggested
by Malinowski (1923) and subsequently elaborated by Firth in his 1950
paper 'Personality and language in society' (see Firth 1957, ch. 14). Essentially
what this implies is that language comes to life only when functioning in
some environment."
29
"In general, the ability to use language in abstract and indirect contexts of
situation is what distinguishes the speech of adults from that of children.
Lea1rning language consists in part in learning to free it from the constraints
of the ,immediate environment. This process begins very early in life, when
the child first learns to ask for things that are not visible and to recall objects
and ,events which he has observed earlier. But it is a gradual process, which
takes place in different ways with different children; this is one of the
variables which Bernstein has found to be significant - which types of
situation serve as the gateway to more abstract and generalized contextual
me:anings." MOVE TOWARDS ABSTRACTIONS
30
"then language is now -serving a primary
function in this aspect of the child's development. ·He'nce he will- have a
strong sense of this use e>f t·anguage, of languag<! as a means of learning about
the~-physical envi-ronment and about· his own ability-to interactwitn it and
coritrol it."

Bernstein's orders

31
School and language - use it to learn
"where it simply has to be taken for granted that for every child, by
the tirne he arrives in school, language is a means of learning; and this is an
assumption that is basic to the educational process. Less obvious, but
perhaps no"
codes Thinking of "bail" vs. goat

32
Register
"An excellent example of register variation (and of how to investigate and
describe it) is provided by Jean Ure in a paper entitled 'Lexical density and
register differentiation' (1971). Here Jean Ure shows that, at least in English,
the lexical density of a text, which -means the proportion oflexical items
(content words) to words as a whole, is a function first ofthe medium (that is,
whether it is spoken or written- written language has a higher lexical density
than speech) and, within that, of the social function (pragmatic language, or
'language of ~ction', has the lowest lexical density of all)."

Predictions!
33
language in use
"Field refers to theinstitutional setting in which a piece of language occurs, and
embraces not only the subject-matter in hand but the whole activity of the
speaker or participant in a setting [we might add: 'and of the other participants'].
.. .
Tenor ... refers to the relationship between participants ... not merely variation
in formality ... but ... such,que~tions as the permanence or otherwise of the
relationship and the degree of emotional charge in it. ...
Mode refers to the channel of communication adopted: not only the choice
between spoken and written medium, but much more detailed choices[ we might
add: 'and other choices relating to the role of language in the situation']. ..."
34
dialect
"Thus our functional picture of the adult linguistic system is of a culturally
specificand situationally sensitive range of meaning potential. Language is
the ability to 'mean' in the situation types, or social contexts, that are
generated by the culture. When we talk about 'uses of language', we are
concerned with the meaning potential that is associated with particular
situation types; and we are likely to be especially interested in those which
are of some social and cultural significance, in the light of a sociological
theory of language such as Bernstein's. This last point is perhaps worth
stressing. The way that we have envisaged the study of language and social
man, through the concept of 'meaning potential', might be referred to as a
kind of 'sociosemantics'; in the sense that it is the study of meaning in a social
or sociological framework."