The Implications of Bernstein’s Theory of Codes on Contemporary Chinese Education

Wei ZHAO

Abstract


The Theory of Codes proposed by the famous English educational sociologist Basil Bernstein is one of the most influential theories both in educational and linguistic academia, especially functional linguistics. It serves as a guideline to explain contemporary Chinese educational issues. This paper aims to make a detailed analysis of some misconceptions about the Theory of Codes from a functional linguistic perspective: (1) the Chinese and Western class bases of code demarcation; (2) the misconception of language as social dialect；(3) the attribution of educational failure to language failure; (4) social value assignment to codes; (5) the misunderstanding of the Theory of Codes due to convergence between urban and rural areas. The theory’s appliability in Chinese educational context is further explored and some implications are drawn to help interpret and solve educational issues in China.


Keywords


Bernstein; Functional linguistic perspective; The theory of codes; Misconceptions

Full Text:

PDF

References


Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, code and control, Volume 1: Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Chen, L. C. (2011). Reflections on the differences of expressions among pre-school children in the urban and rural from the language code theory. Journal of Sichuan Vocational and Technical College, 2, 84-86.

Chen, L. Y., & Wei, Y. L. (2011). Can language code theory account for contemporary Chinese educational issues? Shanghai Education and Research, 2, 24-27.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1975). Language as social semiotic: Towards a general sociolinguistic theory. In A. Makkai & V. B. Makkai (Eds.). The First LACUS Forum. Californian: Hornbeam Press.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1995). Language and the theory of codes. In A. Sadovnik (Ed.). Knowledge and pedagogy: The sociology of basil bernstein. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Hasan, R. (1973). Code, register and social dialect. In B. Bernstein (Ed.). Class, code and control, Volume 2 (pp. 253-292). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Lei, B. Y. (2007) Educational inequality under Bernstein’s theory of code. Southeast Communication, 6, 99-101.

Li, H. T. (2008).The anthropologic interpretation of the low academic achievement of children of farmer workers—On the current situation investigation and attribution analysis of low academic achievement of children of farmer workers in A city. Journal of Educational Science of Hunan Normal University, 3, 23-26.

Lu, N. N. (2011) A review of Bernstein’s theory of code—Implications to Chinese educational equality. Basic Education Research, 1, 6-7.

Zhao, C. L. (2011). A survey of spiritual homeland construction of migrant workers’ children in urban schools from the perspective of language equality. Education Research and Experiment, 2, 65-69.

Zhao, J., & Liu, Y. B. (2011). On language, utterance and society—A study of Bernstein’s language view from a social-cultural perspective. Journal of Northeast Normal University, 4, 149-152.

Zhao, J., & Liu, Y. B. (2011). On Bernstein’s language competence. Study and Exploration, 5, 198-199.

Zhu, Y. S. (2011).The influence of Bernstein’s theory of educational sociology on the systemic functional linguistics. Foreign Language Education, 4, 6-12.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/%25x

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c)



Reminder

  • How to do online submission to another Journal?
  • If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

  • Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/css/submission/wizard

  • Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
  • We only use four mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.org

 Articles published in Canadian Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 

Canadian Social Science Editorial Office

Address: 1020 Bouvier Street, Suite 400, Quebec City, Quebec, G2K 0K9, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail:caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net

Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture