Language as a form of social behavior [La lengua como forma de comportamiento social]

Abstract

This article will show from a theoretical point of view the main reasons why investigating language as social behaviour allows to understand not only the social structure but also language, which is understood as a social activity that is developed throughout the different functions it performs and throughout the structures used to perform these functions because they can be considered an answer to the social activity requested by society. In this way, language has potential behaviour, i.e., language realizes the behaviour that speakers can perform. This article will point out the main reasons why Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) is the appropriate theoretical framework to refer to language as social behaviour since it is a model that studies the relationships between the linguistic structure, the social values and the ideologies.