Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
▶Basil Bernstein, ‘Social class, language and social-
ization’, an extract from his major work, in John
Corner and Jeremy Hawthorn, eds, Communication
Studies (Arnold, 1993).
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) US
donor-funded independent organization formed
in 1990 to campaign for, and defend, public and
consumer interest in the fi eld of digital rights.
Electronic mail: e-mail Th e sending and receiv-
ing of e-mails – texts of all kinds through the
‘postal’ system of the computer – has become
the fastest-growing means of communication
in business, within institutions and between
friends, families and total strangers across the
world. It has proved a useful tool in the exchange
of knowledge, the provision of advice, the
two-way transmission of research data and the
sharing across social and national boundaries of
a myriad of problems. It serves as a link between
groups and communities of like interest, all at
the price of a local phone-call.
In 1992 only 2 per cent of the American popu-
lation used the e-mail service. Th is had risen in
1998 to 15 per cent. By 2010, 77 per cent of the
North American population had e-mailing facil-
ity, an increase of of 146 per cent in the period
2000–2010, according to statistics published by
Internetwordstatistics (www.internetworldstats.
com). The figure for population penetration
of e-mail use in Europe was 58 per cent, with
Iceland topping the chart with 97 per cent
compared with Sweden (92), the Netherlands
(88), Denmark (86), the UK (82), Germany
(79) and France (68). Albania’s 43 per cent
penetration marked a 59,900 per cent growth.
These figures contrast dramatically with
Africa’s 10 per cent penetration. While that of
Tunisia was 34 per cent, Egypt 21 per cent and
South Africa 10 per cent, e-mailing was all but
a stranger to the majority of the population of
Chad (1), the Congo Democratic Republic
(0.5), and Ethiopia (0.5). Somalia’s 1 per cent
represented a growth of 52,900 per cent.
The rise in what has been referred to as
‘computer babble’, both for business and leisure
use, is such that e-mails now constitute a prob-
lem as much as an opportunity. Th e Wall Street
Journal has gauged that a typical worker in a
European company deals with an average of 150
e-mails a day. Allowing time to read these and
reply, it would take some four to fi ve hours to
process – a dramatic example of information
overload. Th e Journal reported that an executive
returning to the States from a business trip in
Europe found 2,000 e-mails waiting to be dealt
with.language codes, the Elaborated and Restricted
codes based upon research into the language-
use of children. Bernstein maintained that there
are substantial diff erences in speech between
middle-class and working-class children (see
class), the former using the Elaborated Code,
the latter the Restricted Code.
The determinant of the code in each case
is the nature of the social relationships and
influences to which the child is exposed. A
close-knit, traditional working-class commu-
nity, Bernstein argues, has tended to use the
Restricted Code because a high degree of shared
meaning is assumed. In the more typically
loose-knit middle-class communities there are
fewer grounds for making assumptions about
shared meaning, and therefore a more explicit- Elaborated – code is used. Th is is not to say
that the middle classes do not possess their
own Restricted Codes in particular social or
professional situations; the important point is
that they have been able to move with ease from
a Restricted to an Elaborated Code when it is
socially or educationally necessary.
Th e Restricted Code tends to be less complex
than the Elaborated, with a small vocabulary and
simpler sentence structure; spoken rather than
written. It is easy to predict (high in redun-
dancy) whereas the Elaborated Code is less
easy to predict (high in entropy). Th e Restricted
Code is orientated towards social relations,
towards commonality, while the Elaborated
Code represents an emphasis on individuality
and individual diff erences.
Th e one is the language of the street, the home,
the playground, the pub; the other, very largely,
the language of school, the language of formal
education. Th us, Bernstein indicates, within the
educational context, the user of the Restricted
Code can be placed at a disadvantage. He does
not argue that the Elaborated Code is superior to
the Restricted Code, only that it is diff erent and
more useful for upward social mobility.
Bernstein’s claims prompted considerable
debate, some of it critical, and a number of
researchers argued that his classifi cation is infl ex-
ible. Martin Montgomery, for instance, in An
Introduction to Language and Society (Routledge,
- writes, ‘Th ere is, for example, in the fi nal
analysis hardly any linguistic evidence to support
the division of speech into two mutually exclusive
codes or speech variants. And by the same token,
Bernstein’s treatment of the social structure looks
with hindsight somewhat rigid and schematic.’
See topic guide under language/discourse/
narrative; representation.