Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies, 8th edition

Elaborated and Restricted Codes

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L M N O P R S T U V

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Th e three core elements are interdependent

and interactive, and the sense of empowerment

will depend on the nature of communication, to

put it briefl y, less target-orientated, less occupied

with the ‘ideology of clarity’, of objectivization,

less individualized, less defensive of self, value

and ideology and more communal, in essence,

more connective; indeed orientated towards the

cultivation of a ‘planetary identity’.

While Eisenberg does not wish to minimize

the importance of ‘understanding’ in communi-

cative exchange, he sees in uncertainty its value

as mystery, a vital counterbalance to strategies

that endanger sympathetic communion with

others; for as the author acknowledges, ‘Despite

unprecedented advances in science and culture,

brutal dictatorships, medieval forms of torture

and genocide persist’ – all in the name of truth-

assertion and the notion of identity as some-

thing fi xed and permanent. Th e stories we tell

ourselves, our construction of identity through

self-narrative, are predicated on the nature of

communication itself, its ability to accommodate

the ‘fundamental indeterminacy of the future’

which, Eisenberg argues, ‘is an essential quality

of human experience’. See topic guide under

communication models.

Elaborated and Restricted Codes In Class,

Codes and Control Vol. 1 (Paladin, 1971), Basil

Bernstein posed a now-famous classifi cation of

tion, September 2001, Eric M. Eisenberg opens

with the comment that a ‘primary challenge of

human being is living in the present with the

awareness of an uncertain future’. His focus is

identity, the search for it, the establishment of it,

and its shifting nature, as it relates to processes

of communication within a modern-day context

of fl ux and insecurity.

Th e aim of contemporary discourse should be

to work towards stability without transforming

that into dogma, into single truths. Th e author

cites the many wars being fought across the

globe ‘over truth claims of one kind or another’.

Just as there is a multiplicity of truths, so there is

fl uidity of identity, individual, group, communal

or national.

Th e model demonstrates the interconnected-

ness of surround, that is a range of infl uences

upon human beings in communities, and the

process of communication, the dynamic of which

arises from mood and personal narrative. Mood

is how we feel about ourselves, our thoughts and

emotions, our physical as well as psychological

orientation to the world around us; to others

within the context of that world. It concerns our

sense of power – power to take hold of our lives,

shape them, and this connects to the stories we

construct about ourselves, our identity; facilitat-

ing (or otherwise) what Eisenberg terms our

‘narrative possibility’.

Eisenberg’s model of communication and identity, 2001 (the identity process, with three subprocesses
operating within a surround)