Blurb:

Coded messages, passed between us, turn the subjective into the intersubjective,
the private into the public. As Hasan explains in What’s Going
On?: A dynamic view of context in language (1981), there are multiple
semiotic codes at work in both text creation and interpretation. Formed
out of systems of social convention, these codes not only convey but also
shape our perception. The individual, writes Hasan, ‘can be seen as a being
who has been actively shaped by the sum of his own interactions and hence
by the nature of the multiple semiotic codes prevalent in his community.’
The blurring of artificially imposed dichotomies between the individual
and the social, the unique and the conventional follows from an appreciation
of the inherently social nature of interaction, ‘no matter how personal
the ends it is made to achieve.’