Bernstein Language Codes

1
Bernstein Language Codes

• Social Class

2
Who is Bernstein?

• He was a British sociologist, who conducted a
  study of working class and middle class children
  in the 1970s.
• He believed that working class children were
  being disadvantaged in the school system by their
  language code.

3
What were these codes?

• Two types of codesor styles of language use.
  Children tend to adopt one of these styles
  depending on their social class.
• Elaborated code (Middle/Upper Middle class)
• Restricted code (Working class)

4
How were these codes different?

• One of Bernstein's research studies involved
  showing a group of children a
• strip cartoon and recording their account of what
  it depicted. Some said
• things like
• "They're playing football and he kicks it and it
  goes through there
• it breaks the window and they're looking at it
• and he comes out and shouts at them
• because they've broken it
• so they run away
• and then she looks out and she tells them off"
• while others said
• "Three boys are playing football and one boy
  kicks the ball
• and it goes through the window
• the ball breaks the window and the boys are
  looking at it
• and a man comes out and shouts at them because
  they've broken the window
• so they run away
• and then that lady looks out of her window and
  she tells the boys off." (Move)

5
What differences did you notice?

• Three boys rather than they
• One boy rather than he
• The ball rather than it
• The boys rather than them
• How would these differences affect someone who
• was listening to the two accounts?
• What do you need to understand the first account?

6
How did these different ways of speaking come
about?

• Bernstein, being a sociologist, looked at the
  different family circumstances of
• working class and middle class families and this
  is what he found out
• Working class families
• Low social mobility
• Confined, close-knit communities
• Fixed, traditional gender roles (economic
  division of labour)
• Strongly shared assumptions
• Common experience and expectations
• WE
• CLOSED SYSTEM
• Redundant, phatic communication (also NVC
• Useful for expressing solidarity, reinforcing
  social relations, confirming group identity
• Language was simple, predictable, immediate and
  concrete

7

• Middle class families
• Higher social mobility
• Dispersed nuclear family
• Negotiated social roles
• Individual beliefs
• Diversity of experience
• I
• OPEN SYSTEM
• More entropic communication
• Referential expressing individual ideas
• Language is complex, unpredictable, abstract
• Explicit, explored through precise use of
  language
• UNIVERSALISTIC
• ELABORATED CODE

8
Which code is better?

• It depends on what the language is suited for.
• Restricted code works better than elaborated code
  in situations where there is a lot of shared and
  taken-for-granted knowledge among the group of
  speakers.
• Under these circumstances, RC is economical and
  rich, conveying a vast amount of meaning with a
  few words,

9
Example

• OReillys at it again." (Restricted)
• vs.
• "I see from the Internet article I am reading
  that Bill OReilly, FOX news talk-show
  personality, is once again trying to attack
  antiwar sentiment from a position of right-wing
  populism as we discussed a couple of days ago."
  (Elaborated)

10
So whats the difference between the two codes?

• Restricted code carries a social message of
  inclusion
• Using it assumes that the person addressed is
  "one of us".
• It takes one form within a family or a friendship
  group, and another with the use of occupational
  jargon within a work group.
• Its key feature is that it works within, and is
  tuned to, a restricted community. Think of some
  other restricted communities one is given
  below.
• Everyone uses restricted code some of the time.
  It would be a very odd and cold family which did
  not have its own language.

11
Elaborated code

• Elaborated code spells everything out.
• It does so because it is necessaryotherwise, not
  everyone can understand what is said.
• It has to elaborate because the circumstances do
  not allow speakers to use shorthand.

12
Why did it matter that working class kids had a
different code?

• Bernsteins research
• showed that working-class students had access to
  their restricted code
• but middle-class students had access to both
  restricted and elaborated codes.

13
Why do schools use elaborated code?

• Because schools are
• concerned with the introduction of new knowledge
  which goes beyond existing shared meanings
• relatively anonymous institutions which may not
  share many taken-for-granted meanings in their
  formal structures
• So schools (and teachers, students, etc.) need to
  use elaborated code.

14
Problems with Bernsteins Research

• The social conditions which working class and
  middle class children live in nowadays are not
  the same as when he did his research working
  class communities not so cut off
• Terms like restricted and elaborated implies
  deficiency (something missing) from working class
  language
• Bernstein did not question the implication that
  children are expected to use elaborated code as a
  convention of the education system is this
  actually true?
• Some of Bernsteins research used limited data on
  topics more accessible to middle class speakers
  like capital punishment. Later researchers found
  that working class speakers did use elaborated
  code in different contexts.
• Bernstein carried out research in artificial
  situations university departments.