ABSTRACT
This chapter devotes an elaboration of structural functionalism. It evidents consensual and politically conservative nature of Parsonian structural functionalism. Structural functionalism is the perspective which has been adopted uncritically by most sociolinguists to the extent that sociolinguistics can, to a very great extent, be regarded as the structural functional discussion of language in society. The functional needs of social integration and the conditions necessary for the functioning of a plurality of actors as a 'unit' system sufficiently well integrated to exist as such impose others. The social and cultural systems are distinct with reference to determination and constitution, despite the fact that there is some form of determinate relationship between them in that it is the cultural system that is decisive as a condition of existence of social relations and social development. The system of action – the differentiation between personality, social and cultural systems – is part of the evolutionary process.
