ide distinctive answers to three questions: 1) what is a person; 2) what is society? and 3) how are persons and societies linked through communication?
Philipsen (1992) goes on to argue that society or culture is existentially and morally prior to the person and communication is a process in which psychological similarities and social differences are manifested so as to link individuals in relations of solidarity and hierarchy. A code of speaking therefore provides a system of rules and premises that is a rhetorical resource or a resource that is used in appealing to others to act. Philipsen (1992, p. 16) summarizes the relationship between culture and verbal discourse by stating that "it also marks off a universe of meaning and supplies a system of interpretive resources with which interlocutors can make sense with each other."
Roger Fowler (1974) refers to "speech-communities" or cultural subgroups and notes that the study of such groups enables linguistic ethnographers to examine the cultural overview which leads
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