Language Codes and Classroom Practice

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Bernstein has argued, through nearly 30 years of writing about language codes, that there is an ‘opposition’ (or at least a ‘radical discontinuity') between the modes of communication which predominate in schools and those to which many pupils are accustomed. Briefly, he has maintained that schools are ‘predicated upon elaborated codes’. This claim is re‐examined, partly in the light of Paul Atkinson's recent structuralist critique of Bernstein, and mainly by reference to evidence from classroom research which suggests more readily a predominance of restricted (or perhaps quasi‐elaborated) codes. While the processing of ‘decontextualised’ information is undoubtedly a central feature of formal schooling, it is argued that an essential defining feature of elaborated codes as Bernstein himself presents them is that meanings are transmitted in ways which give access to the grounds for accepting them and which are therefore open to being challenged. It remains an unusual classroom in which pupils find opportunities for disturbing a body of received knowledge.