ABSTRACT
Transformational theory is presented as having its foundations in an idealization of the linguistics domains that emphasizes the operations of one faculty of the mind, the language faculty. This chapter describes the functional significance of the transformational properties of language for systems of social action. It explains that the consequences of the transformational properties of language for processes of social action can be grasped comprehensively only through functional treatment of the operative importance of language as the central member of the 'family' of communicative media circulating in the internal environments of action systems. It describes the continuities in form and operation between language and the other generative media of social action, transformational theory can extend insights of its micro-sociological schema to analysis of the differentiation patterns among principal institutional domains of society, perhaps the primary concern of macro-sociology. The reception of transformational theory in sociology has flourished in the micro-sociology field, although it has suggestive applications in macro-sociology as well.
