Search

After briefly outlining Bernstein's personal and educational history, the paper goes on to review the scope of his work over the past 30 years, his theoretical contribution and his position among colleagues in the post-WWII era of British sociology. There follows a more detailed examination of the main tenets of his theory, pointing out that Bernstein's strategy was to present his ideas in the form of dichotomies, such as that between modes of socialization as personal or positional, and of linguistic codes as elaborated or restricted. The paper suggests that while critical issues in educational thinking and in sociology varied through the course of Bernstein's career, such as the study of socialization and its consequences for social reproduction, his dichotomizing remained a constant strategy throughout his writings. I end by briefly referring to my own work that offers some possible alternatives to Bernstein's dichotomies, concluding, however, that the enduring quality of Bernstein owes not a little to the appeal of his overly sharp theoretical distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how entrepreneurial visions of the future contribute to neoliberalism's appropriation of language learning as a strategy for capital accumulation. Taking as an example South Korea's heavy investment in children's English language learning – commonly known as early English education (yeongeo jogi gyoyuk) – it discusses how affective conditions of anticipation (Adams, Murphy and Clarke. 2009. Anticipation: Technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity 28(1). 246–265.) may serve as a basis for rationalizing the incorporation of language learning as an essential element of entrepreneurial visions of the self. Based on examples from the discourse of the Korean private English education market and ethnographic observations from early study abroad (jogi yuhak) families in Singapore, we show how the English language learning of young children in the Korean context was framed and justified as an investment in the future. We then discuss how parents' hopes and fears about their children's future played a major role in transforming English language learning into a matter of neoliberal anticipation. We conclude by considering how this affective orientation to the future inherent in early English education may serve as a juncture for critiquing the entrepreneurial vision of the self that underlies the logic of human capital development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a little known Bernstein concept of ‘gender codes’ developed in the study of schooling, suggesting that schools transmit hidden gender messages though a range of semiotic devices. Initially, the paper shows how Bernstein's 1970s' research provided a novel way of looking at some critical issues current in educational sociology, to address knowledge transmission and socialization across generational and class differences. Bernstein's focus on the ways argumentation shapes class differentiated social relationships gave a new direction that later became part of language socialization research. His work incorporated several disciplinary traditions, social psychology, social anthropology and structural functional linguistics, to answer sociological questions. The study reported here follows in Bernstein's footsteps by focusing on a rarely studied group, that of mature women students who are the first in their families to go to college, and who combine family life, paid work with their academic studies. Using an analysis that focuses on differences in rhetorical style, the paper examines the different ways in which women construct their narrative selves in describing their differing life trajectories. The research suggests that Bernstein's concept of gender codes does not allow for a more changing and dynamic view of gender and intergenerational relations that any current socialization research requires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bernstein recognised that his claims about the role of language in education, and the differential success of children from different social strata were effectively claims about underlying psychological processes, and the relationship between language and thought. In attempting to bridge the gap between macro-sociological analyses and individual performance, he sought to draw on existing work in various parts of psychology including the newly emerging discipline of psycholinguistics. Many of these developments were happening in his local academic milieu in London, and he drew on a broad literature. Ultimately, his foray into psychology proved unsuccessful. This was due to a failure to generate the right kind of conceptual clarity necessary for the operational definitions in this type of psychological study. The perspective he offered, however, has merit, and subsequent work has suggested that the failure of his psychological studies was not necessarily a failure of his general proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia is a multi-ethnic, multilingual country with a population of about 23,953,136 people (The CIA World Factbook, 2005), and at least a hundred languages/dialects. Malays and other indigenous groups make up 58 percent of the population, the Chinese 24 percent, the Indians 8 percent while other ethnic groups constitute 10 percent of the total population. Most Malaysians are bilingual, as Malay, the national language, is the medium of instruction in state schools while English is a strong second language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this special issue, we bring together empirical research that takes a critical perspective on the relationship between language learning and individual aspirations for future success. In doing so we aim to initiate a debate on how neoliberal ideology and mode of governance permeate language learning as part of a wider neoliberal project that postulates the ideal of the competitive and self-responsible language learner. The four contributions illustrate how neoliberal desires about entrepreneurial selves play out differently within different social, political, or linguistic contexts. They do not only address different languages individuals supposedly need to teach or acquire for a successful future within a specific context, but also concentrate on the discourses and social relations shaping these entrepreneurial aspirations. Ranging from vocational training in Japan, early education in Singapore, healthcare tourism in India, to higher education in Switzerland, the contributions all illustrate the role of language as part of the struggle to improve either oneself or others. While the research sites illustrate that investments in language are simultaneously promising and risky and as such dependent on local and global linguistic markets, they equally highlight underlying language ideologies and reveal wider structures of inequality that are firmly embedded in local, national and global contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to describe young children's beliefs about language and bilingualism as they are expressed in verbal utterances. The data is from Swedish-medium preschool units in three different sites in Finland. It was generated through ethnographic observations and recordings of the author's interactions with the children. The meaning constructions in the interactions were analyzed mainly by looking closely at the participants' turn taking and conversational roles. The results show that children's beliefs of bilingualism are that you should use one language when speaking to one person; that languages are learnt through using them; and that the advantage of knowing more than one language is being able to talk to (other) people. The results also show that this knowledge of languages is no different from other knowledge within their world. This will probably change over time as the children enter school, and it is something in which our presence as language researchers will have played a part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the narrative-based interview data of three Indian women to examine the manner in which they utilize stylization to construct identity-rich, ideological stances related to discriminatory discourses of Hindi and English medium education in the linguistically rich, albeit complex, present-day context of India. Stylization is understood to be a "knowing deployment of culturally familiar styles and identities that are marked as deviating from those predictably associated with the current speaking context" (Coupland 2001a: 345). The three analyzed voices are stylized by devices such as mock Hindi medium English, Hinglish - a local combination of Hindi and English, and an exaggerated theatricality - realized through a hyperbolic manipulation of pace, volume, pitch, and laughing tones. Analysis of these diverse stylization episodes reveals that while English is typically associated with positions of power for speakers, its actual value depends on the speakers' interactional framing. The analysis illustrates that stylized speech is variously harnessed by participants to reproduce hegemonic linguistic discourses or to enact oblique, if incomplete, critiques of them. The study is based on data collected for larger projects in which 34 Indian women were interviewed in the North Indian city of Dehradun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article constitutes a re-reading of and an attempt to rehabilitate Basil Bernstein, both of which are important in light of the interpretation of Bernstein as a proponent of the verbal deficit view, and the general discrediting of his work on social class differences in the British educational system, as related to what he later called ‘codes’, by scholars like Jensen (Social class and verbal learning, Holt, 1968) and Labov (The logic of non-standard English, Georgetown University Press, 1970), in particular. Exploring whether the international criticism of Bernstein was justified entails both an analysis of articles written by Jensen (Social class and verbal learning, Holt, 1968) and Labov (The logic of non-standard English, Georgetown University Press, 1970) and by Bernstein, notably ‘Language and social class’ and ‘A critique of the concept of compensatory education’, both published in the first volume of Class, codes and control (Bernstein, Class, codes and control, Volume 1. Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language, Schocken Books, 1971). The article argues for the importance of contextualising Bernstein's thoughts on language and society within the socio-political climate framing his scholarship and the development of his ideas as a whole. We show that much of the interpretation of Bernstein is, in fact, a misinterpretation, for which Bernstein was only partly at fault. By rehabilitating some of Bernstein's ideas, it is possible to argue for their relevance today, especially with reference to salient connections between socio-cultural background and performance at school. Furthermore, Labov and Bernstein may not have been so far apart in their thinking as has previously been assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the role of English in Finland, where English is gaining ground in a variety of domains. While the spread of English has generated debate, little empirical evidence exists on how English is taken up and put to use by Finns, and the functions it serves in its various contexts of use. This article reports on work conducted in a project English voices in Finnish society: uses and functions of English in the media, education and professional life. Combining insights from sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics, the project describes the uses of English in language contact situations across the three key domains covered in the project. The objective of the project is to shed light on the diversity and complexity of language choice, alternation and mixed language uses in contact situations and in texts. The focus is on the linguistic choices made, the forms and patterns used and the social functions they serve, and on how the uses of a language can shape and be shaped by more general social and cultural processes and structures. The article shows how English affects domains in Finnish society in a variety of ways, and how the spread of English in Finland can be conceptualised as a phenomenon which emerges at a local level and flows across domains and contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]