There has been a great deal of controversy over Bernstein’s codes as they
have been linked to theories which relate language learning to social class
and educational policies.
see also deficit hypothesiscode^3 n
any system of signals which can be used for sending a message. A natural
language is an example of a code, as are Morse code, braille, and sign
language.
The medium through which the signals are sent (e.g. by telephone, in
writing) is called the channel(b).
code mixingn
a mixing of two codes (see code^1 ) or languages, usually without a change
of topic. This is quite common in bilingual or multilingual communities
and is often a mark of solidarity, e.g. between bilingual friends or
colleagues in an informal situation. Code mixing can involve various
levels of language, e.g. phonology, morphology, grammatical structures
or lexical items.
Bilingual or multilingual speakers, for example, may think that one of their
languages, e.g. English, has more appropriate lexical items for something
they want to express in a particular situation and they incorporate these
into the grammatical structure of the other language, in this case Mandarin
Chinese:
A: Zuóti 1 n de party zBnmeyàng?
Yesterday’s party how
How was yesterday’s party?
B: Bié tí party bù party le!
Don’t mention party no party no longer
Don’t talk to me about the party!
Sometimes a type of code mixing even acquires a special name, e.g.
Ugewa (the mixing of English and Cantonese by Hong Kong university
students).
see also code selection, code switching
code selectionn
the selection of a particular language or language variety for a given situation.
If someone uses more than one code when communicating with others, they
usually select one code for certain purposes (in certain places and with
certain people) and use another code for other purposes (in other places and
with other people). This code selection is often quite regular and its patterns
can be investigated.
code