Class, Codes, and Control

by Basil B. Bernstein

Basil Bernstein rarely had a good press in the forty-odd years in which he presented his developing theories to the public. Early admiration for his sociolinguistic 'discoveries' - of codes which regulate, at a deep-structural level, family beliefs and behaviours and relationships, as well as surface utterances - turned quite quickly into a suspicion that his description of social class difference amounted to a declaration of working class deficit. Although Bernstein's writings, particularly in the 1990s, became opaque to the point of seeming to be purposefully obscurantist, they have always been enlivened by clear, pithy and punchy statements which left no room for ambiguity about the case he was making. The struggle to achieve an education system which would offer genuinely equal opportunities to children from all class and cultural backgrounds continued to underpin the writing and teaching of his later years.

Genres: Language, Nonfiction, Education, Sociology

1250 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 2003

Reviews

[Bionic Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basil Bernstein's work on Language has run the whole gamut from being considered breakthrough and profound material to a brief early period of having the deepest suspicions cast on its conclusions.

He developed a theory over 40-odd years, that language is split into "codes", and that we all use differing "codes" depending on where we are and who we are talking to. He describes one code which a child would use at home, another with their friends, another at school and so on. One child could have many different "codes" or languages. The impoverishment would come when a child had very narrow influences imposing a "restricted code", so that in some circumstances s/he could not perform as well as other children, or have any parity.

Suspicions were aroused that the implication of this was that the language used by working class people, or those who communicate in different cultural varieties of English, was in some way deficient. The truth of the matter was quite the reverse. He explained that "Code" is not synonymous with "dialect". A "restricted code" is one which presupposes a certain amount of shared knowledge between the people using it. An "elaborated code" would be understandable by a stranger. The ideal would be for a person to be able to talk in many "codes." Bernstein's socio-linguistic discoveries showed time and time again that the more codes a child had - the more "languages" they spoke - the faster their learning progressed.

Bernstein was committed to achieving an Education system which would afford equal opportunity to all. Although this particular work was written in 1971, it forms the basis of studies into language and communication even now.