ABSTRACT
In the previous papers attempts have been made to find a way of analysing some of the interrelationships between social structure, language-use and subsequent behaviour. In some way the form of the social relationship acts selectively on the speech possibilities of the individual, and again in some way these possibilities constrain behaviour. Luria (1959, 1961) has explored both theoretically and experimentally the regulative function of speech. I take it that a proposition central to his view is that when a child speaks he voluntarily produces changes in his field of stimuli and his subsequent behaviour is modified by the nature of these changes. I shall here propose that forms of spoken language in the process of their learning initiate, generalize and reinforce special types of relationship with the environment and thus create for the individual particular dimensions of significance. One of the tasks of the sociologist would be to seek the social origins of particular linguistic forms and to examine their regulative function. This task would become an attempt to reduce the interrelationships between social structure, language-use and individual behaviour to a theory of social learning. Such a theory should indicate what in the environment is available to be learned, the conditions of learning and the constraints on subsequent learning. From this point of view the social structure transforms language possibility into a specific code which elicits, generalizes and reinforces those relationships necessary for its continuance.
