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MIKLÓS HELTAI — PÁL HELTAI
more with memorizing bare facts — they expect intellectual food in the form
of problems, and feeding them just more facts will actually hinder their intel¬
lectual development.
THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE
Karacsony regarded language as the psychic form of all human relations. It is in
this sense that he talked about socio-emotional, socio-intellectual, and socio¬
volitional “languages” (this last should not be confused with body language
and gestures), which function in the relations he called “social”: art, language
and society, i.e. communication taking place through systems of symbols, signs
and acts.
He maintained that all interpersonal interactions take place through the
medium of language, and for this reason the success of education crucially
depends on language. All education must be “linguistic” education, which we
may translate into present-day usage as all education must take place through
communication, interaction. Teachers must “find a common language” with
pupils if they are to have any (educational) influence on them. This common
language varies according to the stage of the pupils’ psychological development.
However, the linguistic education that children received at school at that
time was mere grammatical parsing, which they hated. Karacsony contended
that this was because the children did not see any connection between gram¬
mar and communication. For this reason he wrote a Hungarian grammar based
on interpersonal psychology”’, following a top-down approach. Instead of start¬
ing with phonetics, morphology and syntax, the book starts with the general
features of communication: the purpose of communication, how grammar is
used to achieve communication, and what is the role of different grammatical
forms from a communicative point of view.
This book gives interesting insights into language and communication. In¬
deed, some linguists (e.g. Fabriczius-Kovacs, 1967, 1969)’ claim that he was
probably among the first to develop a general theory of communication.
Karäcsony’s starting point is the mental picture (in today’s linguistic par¬
lance, the preverbal message). In the course of discourse, content is transferred
from one person to another through linguistic signs, but the meaning of
16 KaRACSONY, Sandor, Magyar nyelvtan tarsaslélektani alapon, Budapest, Szephalom, 2010.
17 Fasriczius-Kovacs, Ferenc, Jelentés, tarsaslélektan, kommunkäciöelmelet, Magyar Pszicholö¬
giai Szemle, 24 (1967), 331-346; FABRICZIUS-Koväcs, Nyelvtudomäny, kommunkäciöelmelet,
szociälpszicholögia, passim.
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