Which view describes language as a vehicle for establishing interpersonal relations and performing social transactions?

• A. Structuralist
• B. Transformationalists
• C. Second language
• D. Interactionist

Answer: (D)

Language as a tool for building relationships and handling social exchanges is captured by the interactionist view. This perspective treats language as something people use to interact, negotiate meaning, show politeness, manage turn-taking, and perform social roles within specific contexts. It emphasizes how our word choices, tone, and style adapt to who we’re speaking to and what social purpose we’re pursuing, rather than just focusing on structures or rules of language.

So, the idea is that language functions to connect people and accomplish social transactions, not merely to encode grammar or to describe how language is learned. The other options center on form and structure (structuralist), on the mechanics of sentence formation themselves (transformationalists), or on language learning (second language), rather than on social use.