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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 intellectual 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 sociovolitional “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 grammar and communication. For this reason he wrote a Hungarian grammar based on interpersonal psychology”’, following a top-down approach. Instead of starting 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. Indeed, 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 parlance, 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 Pszicholögiai Szemle, 24 (1967), 331-346; FABRICZIUS-Koväcs, Nyelvtudomäny, kommunkäciöelmelet, szociälpszicholögia, passim. * 246 +
