Social Class, Maternal Speech and the Child’s Semantic Orientation

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the influence of social background on the child’s use of language, particularly the influence of the mother. Undoubtedly, the most challenging — and the most challenged — theorising in this area is that of Bernstein, with his wide-ranging code theory. As a theory of cultural reproduction and social production, Bernstein’s central concern is with the transmission/acquisition process. If one thinks of Bernstein’s early detailed work on maternal strategies of control (Bernstein and Cook-Gumperz, 1973; CookGumperz, 1973; Turner, 1973), it is probably true to say that the early work was more explicit on transmission than acquisition. Bern-stein’s (1981; 1987; 1990c) later work has paid much more attention to the linking of transmission and acquisition. Commenting on the earlier work, Bernstein (1990a: 3) writes:

It was not clear how codes are acquired. There was a gap between the process of transmission and the process of acquisition.

Bernstein’s (1990c) recent volume constitutes a significant reformulation of the code theory, in which the concepts of classification and framing (originally used by Bernstein (1971c; 1975) with respect to educational knowledge) have been assimilated into the sociolinguistic theory and are used as linking elements between the transmitter and the acquirer.