Elaborated and Restricted Codes: Their Social Origins and Some Consequences

T HIS paper represents an attempt to discuss some aspects of the interrelationships between social structure, forms of speech, and the subsequent regulation of behavior. The practical context of the enquiry is the differential response to educational opportunity made by children from different social classes (Reissman 1963; Passow 1963). It has become abundantly clear that the determinants of this response are complex and that the response encapsulates the effects of socialization. The problem requires specification of the sociological processes which control the way the developing child relates himself to his environment. It requires an understanding of how certain areas of experience are differentiated, made specific and stabilized, so that which is relevant to the functioning of the social structure becomes relevant for the child. What seems to be needed is the development of a theory of social learning which would indicate what in the environment is available for learning, the conditions of learning, the constraints on subsequent learning, and the major reinforcing process. The behavioral implications of the physical and social environment are transmitted in some way to the child. What is the major channel for such transmissions? What are the principles which regulate such transmissions? What are the psychological consequences and how are these stabilized in the developing child? What factors are responsible for variations in the principles which regulate the transmissions? The socio-linguistic approach used here is a limited attempt to provide some kind of answer to these questions. The general framework of the argument will be given first. This will be followed by a detailed analysis of two general linguistic codes. Towards the end of the paper, some variants of the codes will be very crudely associated with social class.