A public language: some sociological implications of a linguistic form

Abstract

In an earlier paper an attempt was made to show a relationship between two forms of linguistic expression and the way relationships to objects were established (Bernstein 1958: 159–74). It was argued that one form of language use, called a public language, facilitated thinking of a descriptive order and sensitivity to a particular form of social interaction. In the earlier paper a public language was discussed with reference to its use by the unskilled and semi-skilled strata, but approximations to a public language may well be spoken in such widely separated groups as criminal sub-cultures, rural groups, armed forces and adolescent groups in particular situations. Characteristics of a public language are: 1 Short, grammatically simple, often unfinished sentences, a poor syntactical construction with a verbal form stressing the active mood. Simple and repetitive use of conjunctions (so, then, and, because). Frequent use of short commands and questions. Rigid and limited use of adjectives and adverbs. Infrequent use of impersonal pronouns as subjects (one, it). Statements formulated as implicit questions which set up a sympathetic circularity, e.g. ‘Just fancy?’, ‘It's only natural, isn't it?’‘I wouldn't have believed it.’ A statement of fact is often used as both a reason and a conclusion, or more accurately, the reason and conclusion are confounded to produce a categoric statement, e.g. ‘Do as I tell you’, ‘Hold on tight’, ‘You're not going out’, ‘Lay off that’. Individual selection from a group of idiomatic phrases will frequently be found. Symbolism is of a low order of generality. The individual qualification is implicit in the sentence structure, therefore it is a language of implicit meaning. It is believed that this fact determines the form of the language. These characteristics inter-act cumulatively and developmentally reinforce each other, and so the effect of any one depends on the presence of the others. The use of a public language is most probably a function of a particular social structure, although psychological and physiological factors will in any given case modify the usage. This language use is not necessarily the result of a limited vocabulary but arises out of a sensitivity to a way of organizing and responding to experience. Thus two children of four, one of whom comes from an unskilled or semi-skilled home and the other from a middle-class home, might share a similar vocabulary but the way they relate the words they know will show differences.2 Further, an individual may have at his disposal two linguistic usages, a public language and a formal3 language,4 or he may be limited to one, a public language, depending upon his social group.5 Language is considered one of the most important means of initiating, synthesising, and reinforcing ways of thinking, feeling and behaviour which are functionally related to the social group. It does not, of itself, prevent the expression of specific ideas or confine the individual to a given level of conceptualization, but certain ideas and generalizations are facilitated rather than others. That is the language use facilitates development in a particular direction rather than inhibiting all other possible directions. A public language does not imply a common vocabulary. The vocabulary of the Elephant and Castle is different from the Angel, Islington; is different from the Gorbals; and is different from Tiger Bay. Those forms of communication are often finely differentiated with respect to the objects upon which significance is placed. However, I am concerned with the form or mode of language usage rather than with differences of vocabulary. The term public language refers to a common linguistic mode which various forms of communication, dialects, etc., share. I shall examine the behavioural implications of individuals who are limited to a public language. These characteristics must be considered to give a direction to the organization of thinking and feeling rather than to the establishing of complex modes of relationships. The characteristics are relative to those of a public language. The first four characteristics will be considered. The short, grammatically simple, syntactically poor sentence which is the typical unit of a public language does not facilitate the communication of ideas and relationships which require a precise formulation.6 The crude, simple verbal structure around which the sentence is built points to a possible difficulty inherent in the language use in the expressing of processes. There may be two important implications of this handicap. An approximate verb of a lower logical order may be used to characterize a given process, whilst the verbal construction may fix the process in an inappropriate time as the result of the insensitivity to tense.7 This form of language use is continuously reinforced from the very beginnings of speech, and as the individual learns no other possibility, subjectively, there is little or no experience of inadequate characterization. In fact when a more appropriate formulation is pointed out to the user of a public language the latter may insist that this is precisely what he meant. In a sense this is true, for what the individual wished to characterize, he did. The reformulation represents a second order characterization (that of a formal language), which is alien to the original speaker who will attempt to reduce the second order to the first. When this cannot be done the second order will be considered unnecessary, irrelevant, perhaps silly or the hearer will be bewildered. It may be that the percentage of nouns to verbs is higher in the public language than in a formal language, quite apart from the fact that a public language has a very limiting vocabulary.8 If this is so, then a public language tends to emphasize things rather than processes. Because of a simple sentence construction, and the fact that a public language does not permit the use of conjunctions which serve as important logical distributors of meaning and sequence, a public language will be one in which logical modification and stress can only be crudely rendered linguistically. This necessarily affects the length and type of the completed thought.9 Of equal importance, the reliance on a small group of conjunctions (‘and’, ‘so’, ‘then’, ‘because’) often means that a wrong conjunction is used or an approximate term is constantly substituted for a more exact logical distinction. The approximate term will then become the equivalent of the appropriate logical distinction. As there is a limited and rigid use of adjectives and adverbs individual qualifications of objects (nouns) and individual modifications of processes (adverbs) will be severely reduced. Because the choice is restricted, the adjectives and adverbs function as social counters through which the individual qualifications will be made. This drastically reduces the verbal elaboration of the qualification which is given meaning by expressive symbolism.10 The fifth characteristic indicated that there would be infrequent use of impersonal pronouns as subjects of sentences. I am thinking here of the pronoun ‘one’. The use of the pronoun ‘one’ as subject implies the objectification of the experience which is verbalized. The subject is made general and so freed from the confines of a personal experience. ‘One’ also indicates an attitude to the relationships which confront the individual. In a special sense it involves a reaching beyond the immediate experience, a transcending of the personal and brings the individual into a particular relationship with objects and persons. Impersonality becomes an important aspect of the possibilities flowing from the language. However with a public language it is much more probable that the pronouns ‘we’ or ‘you’ will serve an apparently similar function to ‘one’. It is in fact not similar, nor is it a simple substitution; for ‘we’ or ‘you’ refer to the local experience, the local social relationships, the immediate normative arrangements, and are bounded by the personal. The social and logical frames of reference are different, being insular and restricted. The possibilities inherent in ‘one’ are absent; possibilities which are of both social and logical importance. The sixth characteristic of a public language refers to the frequency with which a statement of fact is used both as a reason and a conclusion; more accurately, the reason is confounded with the conclusion to produce a categoric statement.11 Obviously this form of statement will appear in the context of many different forms of language use and it will often be associated with statements where the reason and the conclusion are clearly demarcated. Here the categoric statement will come at a different point in a behavioural sequence, as it does if the categoric statement is part of a formal language. However in a public language where this confounding feature frequently occurs, the authority or legitimacy for the statement will reside in the form of the social relationship which is non-verbally present (e.g. by a parent to a child; the lower ranks of a chain of command in an army hierarchy; by a leader to a gang member), rather than in reasoned principles. The categoric statement is used in order to bring about the immediate termination of behaviour or the immediate initiating of new behaviour. When this form of communication takes place between parent and child the reasons for the required change of behaviour are rarely or only briefly given and so a possible range of behaviour and, more importantly, learning will not occur. Equally as important as the cognitive implications are the social implications. For if this categoric statement is to be challenged, as the reason is the authority conferred upon the person, the challenge immediately gives rise to another typical construction, ‘Because I tell you’, ‘Because I'm your father’. The challenger immediately attacks the authority or legitimacy which is an attribute of the form of the relationship and this brings the social relationship into one of an affective type. However, if a formal language is used, reasons are separated from conclusions. The reasons can be challenged as inadequate or inappropriate which may initiate a second set of reasons or a development of the original set. With a formal language the relationship to authority is mediated by a rationality and the final resort to the categoric statement will come at a different point in the behavioural sequence and possibly in a different situation, depending on the implications of the reasons given to support the conclusion. The frequency of, and dependency upon, the categoric statement in a public language reinforces the personal at the expense of the logical, limits the range of behaviour and learning, and conditions types of reaction and sensitivity towards authority.12 The sixth characteristic referred to statements which set up a sympathetic circularity, which may be initiated in several ways, but the dialogue always takes the form of a repetition of a thought by the conversants which maximizes the affective element of the relationship and at the same time restricts the ambit and the order of the discussion.13 Often the circularity is initiated by some strange or alien fact or something which is peculiar to the local group. It may have been provoked by an experience which threatens or consolidates the social principles of the group's arrangements. Again there are two important logical and social implications. The circularity discourages further analysis of the event and processes which provoked it and so discourages the search for reasons other than those which can be formulated in a public language. It inhibits the attitude, and the verbal implications of this attitude which underlie the ‘going beyond what is given’. Curiosity is therefore limited in such a way as to enhance the solidarity of the social relationship. Characteristics eight and nine follow naturally from the previous point. A public language is one which contains a large number of idiomatic, traditional phrases from which the individual chooses. Instead of an individual learning to create a language-use within which he can select to mediate his individual feelings, a public language user tends to attach his feelings to social counters or tags which maximize the solidarity of the social relationship at the cost of the logical structure of the communication, and the specificity of the feeling. For traditional phrases, idioms, etc., tend to operate on a low causal level of generality in which descriptive, concrete, visual, tactile symbols are employed, aimed at maximizing the emotive rather than the logical impact. Finally, the tenth and most important characteristic may be regarded as the determinant of the previous nine. In a public language the individual qualification creates a language of implicit meaning. The individual qualification14 will be made primarily through expressive symbolism or through a selection from the possibilities inherent in a public language, which is tantamount to saying that it rarely occurs at all via the language; for the public language is primarily a means of making social not individual qualifications. If some of the characteristics are examined – short, grammatically simple, syntactically poor sentence construction; inappropriate verbal forms; simple and repetitive use of conjunctions; rigid and limited use of adjectives and adverbs; selection from a group of traditional phrases: the very means of communication do not permit, even discourage, individually differentiated cognitive and affective responses. This is not to say that speakers of this language interact in a completely uniform manner, for the potential of a public language allows a vast range of possibilities, but it provides a language use which discourages the speaker from verbalizing his discrete relationships with the environment. The individual qualification is realized through a means which offers an immediacy of communication; that is, by expressive symbolism, together with a linguistic form which orients the speaker to a relatively low causal order, to descriptive concepts rather than analytic ones. The result of this mediating process orients the speaker to a distinct relationship with objects in the environment and so to a different order of learning from that which accompanies a formal language. With a formal language meaning is logically explicit and finely differentiated, whilst with a public language meaning is implicit and crudely differentiated. By the term ‘differentiated’ reference is made not simply to the range of objects which are elaborated or significant but to the logical order of the elaboration or significance. That is, to the matrix of relationships which arouse and condition responses. In fact when an individual learns a public language he learns to perceive the possibilities symbolized by language in a distinctive way. Language is perceived not as a set of possibilities which can be fashioned subtly and sensitively to facilitate the development of a unique individual experience. Language is not a means to verbalize relatively precisely the experience of separateness and difference. Rather, with a public language the individual from an early age interacts with a linguistic form which maximizes the means of producing social rather than individual symbols, and of course the vehicle of communication powerfully reinforces the initial socially induced preference for this aspect of language use. It is a language use which encourages an immediacy of interaction, a preference for the descriptive rather than the analytic, a linguistic form such that what is not said is equally and often more important than what is said.15 A critical difference between the two speech forms is that whereas in a formal language subjective intent may be verbally elaborated and made explicit this process is not facilitated in a public language. As the structure of a public language reinforces a strong inclusive relationship, the individual will exhibit through a range of activities a powerful sense of allegiance and loyalty to the group, its forms and its aspirations, at the cost of exclusion and perhaps conflict with other social groups who possess a different linguistic form which symbolizes their social arrangements. The structure of a public language inhibits the verbal expression of those experiences of difference which would isolate the individual from his group and channels cognitive and affective states which might be a potential threat. For example, curiosity is limited by the low level of conceptualization which is fostered by this form of language use; the concern with the immediate prevents the development of a reflective experience; and a resistance to change or inherent conservatism is partly a function of a disinterest in processes and a concern with things. Conservatism is also related to the way authority itself is justified or legitimized, for with a public language the authority will inhere in the form of the relationship rather than in reasoned principles. Another important protective function of the public language is that other forms of language use (e.g. formal language) will not be directly comprehensible but will be mediated through the public language. In other words, a formal language will be translated into the public language and thus an alternative orientation which would lead the individual beyond the confines, affective and cognitive, of the public language is neutralized. Where a translation cannot be made at all, there is no communication and thus absolute protection. A public language, because the individual qualification is implicit in the sentence structure, because it is primarily a means for making social qualifications, tends to be what can be called a ‘tough’ language and will elicit behaviour in accordance with this, both verbally through the language structure and physically through expressive movement and style. Tender feelings which are personal and highly individual will not only be difficult to express in this linguistic form, but it is likely that the objects which arouse tender feelings will be given tough terms – particularly those referring to girl-friends, love, death and disappointments. The experience of tender feelings, as with any situation which forces the need to produce individual qualifications, may produce feelings of acute embarrassment, discomfort, a desire to leave the field and denial or hostility towards the object which aroused the tender feelings. To speakers of a public language, tender feelings are a potential threat for in this experience is also the experience of isolation – social isolation. It is suggested that there are two reasons which underlie the inhibition of the individual qualifications. Firstly, as this has never been encouraged or facilitated by the language-use, any situation which requires it will be one in which the individual's previous learning is inappropriate and inadequate; secondly, a psychological correlate of the producing of an individual qualification is isolation from the group. Another psychological correlate of this linguistic form is that it discourages the experience of guilt and shame in relation to particular situations. This is not to say that all feelings of guilt are minimized, but they are minimal in relation to certain social acts. Consider these social terms in one type of public language for a situation where the individual deliberately avoids an allotted task or duty: ‘skive’, ‘scrounge’, ‘dodge the column’, ‘swing the lead’, etc. These terms by their very nature are social counters which the individual can attach to a particular class of act. They do not characterize precisely the nature of the act nor the individual's specific relation to it, so that an impersonal sanction is given to the behaviour which the terms designate. The terms take the form of a type of euphemism which disguises or blurs the implications of the intention. Secondly, certain sociological and psychological associations which would follow from the appropriate descriptions of the act – avoiding work deliberately – are neutralized. Perhaps one of the most important is that experiences of guilt are minimized. This is not to say that the individual will not be aware that the act is wrong nor that punishment is unjust but that feelings of guilt are divorced from the notion of wrongness. This would seem to make more likely the reoccurrence of the behaviour and to create a particular attitude to the punishment. It is not for one moment suggested that if precise terms were used to designate the behaviour that they would, in themselves, inhibit the intended action, but that the action would be accompanied by psychological states which might not be present if the social counters were used. These psychological states may be of great importance in modifying both the form and content of the punishment.16 Perhaps another example might indicate this process more clearly. The social counter ‘lark’, e.g. ‘I only did it for a lark’, covers a dimension of behaviour from a harmless prank to a major delinquency. The term defines the situation as one of play so that if there are any unfortunate consequences these will be regarded as unintended, accidental developments, so freeing the doer from individual responsibility. Experiences of guilt are thus minimized, which makes possible a range of activity and, of course, learning attaches to the activity and so conditions future behaviour. Again, the activity made possible by the sanction ‘lark’ may be evaluated as wrong, yet guilt feelings will be divorced from the evaluation and so the sense of individual responsibility will be neutralized. Probably in all forms of language use, a counterpart to the terms used here as examples will be found as rationalizations for behaviour, but where the speaker is limited to a public language those terms are of greatest significance, for they help to reinforce the development of a particular affective and cognitive orientation. It is suggested that speakers limited to a public language have more terms which serve to minimize guilt and that these terms are generalized to include a greater range of activities than have speakers of a formal language. It may be helpful to summarize at this point some of the implications of a public language. The implications are logical, social and pyschological. It is suggested that a correlate of this linguistic form is a low level of conceptualization – an orientation to a low order of causality, a disinterest in processes, a preference to be aroused by and respond to that which is immediately given rather than to the implications of a matrix of relationships, and that this, it is suggested, partly conditions the intensity and extent of curiosity, as well as the mode of establishing relationships. These logical considerations effect what is learned and how it is learned and so effect future learning.17 A preference for a particular form of social relationship is engendered; a form where individual qualifications are non-verbally communicated, or mediated through the limited possibilities of a public language; a preference for inclusive social relationship and a great sensitivity to the demands of solidarity with the group which differs from the relationship to the group which is mediated through a formal language.18 There will exist a socially induced conservatism and resistance to certain forms of change which contrast with an interest in novelty. There will be a tendency to accept and respond to an authority which inheres in the form of the social relationship rather than in reasoned or logical principles. It fosters a form of social relationship where meaning is implicit, where what is not said, when it is not said and, paradoxically, how it is not said, form strategic orientating cues. It is a form of social relationship which maximizes identifications with the aims and principles of a local group rather than with the complex differentiated aims of the major society. This correspondingly minimizes the expression of differences and individual distinctiveness in the sense of the previous discussion. A public language is a linguistic form which discourages the verbalization of tender feeling and consequently the opportunities for learning inherent in the verbal expression of such feelings. Again it is important to add that this does not imply that tender feelings are not subjectively experienced but that the form and implications of their expression are modified. Conversely it is a linguistic form which will tend to elicit ‘tough’ responses either through vocabulary or through expressive style or both. Further, it is probable that ‘tough’ terms will be used to characterize situations or objects rather than the articulation of tender feelings in an individually discrete way. This in its turn modifies the individual's ready entertainment of such feelings. It is a linguistic form which will tend to minimize the experience of guilt in relation to particular classes of situations, so permitting a range of anti-social behaviour (and learning) by divorcing individual responsibility and guilt from the evaluative judgments of the behaviour involved. Finally and most importantly, a situation which calls for an explicit individual qualification may well be one which engenders critical psychological distress for the speaker of a public language. A critical situation of this kind which will be examined later is one typically found in psychiatric treatment. It is necessary to state at this point that the type of public language described and analysed here will rarely be found in the pure state. Even if such an ‘ideal’ language use were to be spoken it would not be used in all situations within the local group. Modifications within the form would occur, most certainly, depending upon whether the situation is defined as social or personal. It is suggested that what is found empirically is an orientation to this form of language use which is conditioned by socially induced preferences. Finally, I should like to examine briefly some of the implications of this form of language use for the psychiatric treatment of those patients who are limited to a public language. It is possible that with the development and expansion of the National Health Service and the growing understanding of the psychological determinants of behavioural disorders (to name but two reasons) more individuals who are confined to a public language will be treated. The form of psychiatric treatment relevant here is where the therapy is inherent in a process of communication rather than by the use of physical medicine, e.g. drugs, E.C.T., insulin and conditioning, etc., and where the patient is neurotic rather than psychotic. It is clear that psychiatrist and patient would be drawn from two distinct cultures and would use two distinct linguistic forms. It is also clear that the speaker of a public language defines the doctor in a specific way and also has particular expectations of the forms of treatment. This analysis is directed not to the general cultural differences, but to the rather more specific and limited problems of what is said, and what has to be said, in order that psychotherapy may be accomplished.19 To begin with the patient is placed in a situation where treatment depends essentially on the extent to which the patient can verbalize or be brought to verbalize by various techniques his particular, discrete, personal relationships with the environment and to eventually understand and emotionally accept the implications of the pattern they form. For this makes possible the transformation of affective processes which is the aim of the treatment. This is necessarily a simplified description of the individual psychotherapeutic situation. However, this involves for the patient a mode of communication and orientation which he has not only never learnt but which has been positively discouraged by his previous learning processes. It is important to realize that reference is not made here to the difficulty which patients have about communicating certain personal experiences concerned with sex, etc., but to the fact that the patient is required to make individual qualifications of his own experience and that this is alien to him. For with a public language, feelings are mediated through a form which maximizes the possibility of a social rather than individual qualification – to the constructing of social rather than individual symbols. This is not to say that the individual does not possess individual symbols, of course he does, but the form of their expression is limited by the language he uses. Individual differentiation proceeds within the limits of the possibilities set by a public language. To the patient the situation is one of perplexity and bewilderment – he is under pressure to give a response he has never learnt to make. This is entirely different from the situation in which a patient speaking a formal language is initially confronted with the psycho-therapeutic situation or where specific problems generated by psychological defences cause temporary blockages. The behaviour of a person speaking a public language is, sociologically speaking, normative. The psycho-therapeutic relationship may also trigger off all the protective devices inherent in a public language. Irrespective of the apparent simplicity of the psychiatrist's vocabulary, complex relationships are symbolized to which the patient is neither oriented nor sensitive. It is probable that the patient will translate the psychiatrist's language (where possible) into a public language and this mediating process will act to preserve the psychological status quo of the patient. For, as was pointed out earlier, the translation involves neutralizing the alternative orientation implicit in the psychiatrist's language. The process of therapy is directed to the establishing of new relationships, often complex ones and to the seeking of sophisticated connections between events. The user of a public language tends to be disinterested in processes and also incurious, as a result of his preference for descriptive concepts of a low order of causality. This may make the whole technique of therapy bewildering, perplexing and seemingly irrelevant to the solution of the patient's particular behavioural problem. Involved in the psycho-therapeutic situation is the need for the verbalization of what have been termed ‘tender feelings’ with their behavioural implications. The discussion of these feelings at ‘surface’ level of interpretation may trigger off a powerful response which is seemingly disproportionate to the intended reaction. There are, it is believed, important psycho-therapeutic implications, related to the form of the organization and expression of tender feelings by a speaker of a public language. A patient limited to this linguistic form will be under a different kind of stress to a patient using a formal language because the latter is able to cope better with a situation where the social relationship is mediated through verbally explicit individual qualifications. The customary form of social relationship for a patient speaking a public language is explicitly structured; the authority inheres in a non-verbal element and is an attribute of the form of the relationship. Cognitive and affective immediacy tend to be conditions for meaningful arousal and response. The psycho-therapeutic relationship is almost the complete antithesis of this, in that it is apparently non-directed, it has few orientating cues, the authority is ambiguous and relies essentially on a verbal mode which gives little explicit direction to the here and now behaviour. It maximizes the pressure on the patient to structure and re-structure his experience with the aid of individual verbal symbols. This suggests that the therapy situation would cause great stress for a public-language patient because of the high level of anxiety generated by the form of the social relationship. It might not be too much to say that the situation itself is felt as persecutory. Therapy with this class of patient is therefore likely to prove unrewarding for both patient and psychiatrist. The likelihood of the patient breaking off treatment early in therapy seems high.20 It may seems that the patient is not ‘co-operating’ or that he is bringing ‘insufficient’ material forward. On the contrary, according to the view presented here there is an abundance of material which arises from the sociologically normative elements of the therapeutic relationship. Sensitivity to the normative elements which are symbolized by the form of communication may make possible the conditions for the beginning of a successful therapeutic relationship. I should like to conclude this paper with some general remarks about the method of analysis used. It is very clear to any student of the sociology of language the debt that is owed to Edward Sapir and his followers who pointed the way to the scientific study of the social institution of language. It is the view held here that language is one of the most important intervening variables between the individual and behaviour. Certainly the implications of a given form of language use are continuously reinforced from the beginning of speech, perhaps even before. The child understands before it can speak. It would seem that a linguistic form orients the individual in one direction rather than another and once this direction is given it is progressively reinforced. The implications of the direction are manifold and subtly modify cognitive, affective and social experiences. Put in another way, the linguistic form is a powerful conditioner of what is learnt, how it is learnt and so influences future learning. In this paper the behaviour which is facilitated by a public language has been analysed. It may seem that there is something inherently circular in the method. One examines the language use and infers social and psychological behaviour, but the latter originally determines the former – for the semantic function of a language is the social structure. What one is doing is simply looking at the social structure through a particular institution, the institution of language, and the perspective may be very rewarding. For it enables the observer to catch a glimpse of the unity of behaviour which exists within the manifold activities. It is not thought that any ‘new’ facts have been found, however, it is hoped that possible relationships have been formed. Perhaps the most important aspect of the approach is that it may throw some light on how the social structure becomes part of individual experience and inasmuch as this is done, it illuminates the relationship between sociology and psychology. Finally, one major implication of the view held here, which is ethical and political rather than sociological, is that the changing of a form of language use, in this case a public language, involves something more than might be thought at first sight. A public language contains its own aesthetic, a simplicity and directness of expression, emotionally virile, pithy and powerful and a metaphoric range of considerable force and appropriateness. Some examples taken from the schools of this country have a beauty which many writers might well envy. It is a language which symbolizes a tradition and a form of social relationship in which the individual is treated as an end, not as a means to a further end. To simply substitute a formal language (which is not necessarily a logical, impersonal, emotionally eviscerated language) is to cut off the individual from his traditional relationships and perhaps alienate him from them. This is the old polarity of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft in another guise. The problem would seem to be to preserve public language usage but to create for the individual the possibility of utilizing a formal language. And this is no easy task for a society which distributes respect and significance according to occupational achievement. It would seem that a change in this mode of language use involves the whole personality of the individual, the very character of his social relationships, his points of reference, emotional and logical, and his conception of himself.