Social Class and Changes in Orientation to Meaning

Abstract

In continuation of studies into children's speech in different contexts undertaken within the framework of Bernstein's sociolinguistic theory, this work investigates differences in orientation to meaning by looking at classification strategies employed by eight year olds in dealing with familiar materials in the context of an extended interview. Social class differences are found in terms of the basic theoretical distinction between relatively context dependent and relatively context independent meanings. These differences are set in the context of the relationship between the child's primary contextualizing experience in the family and the recontextualizing principles of the school, and congruence is postulated between these two types of experience in the case of the middle class child. The results are seen as affording further support for Bernstein's theory of cultural reproduction.