ABSTRACT
It has been suggested that one of the main preoccupations of the 1970’s will be a concern with social man. This implies not simply man in relation to some abstract entity such as ‘society as a whole’ but man in relation to other men; it is a particular facet of man in relation to his environment, only it shifts the emphasis from the physical on to the human environment—on to man in the environment of men. A concern with language and social man has for a long time been one of the perspectives of modern linguistics. Malinowski tells an interesting story of an occasion when he asked his Trobriand Island informant some questions about the Trobrianders’ gardening practices. The potential of language is a meaning potential. This meaning potential is the linguistic realization of the behaviour potential; ‘can mean’ is ‘can do’ when translated into language.
