Pause for thought: Why Bernstein was not a psycholinguist
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David Good
Abstract
Bernstein recognised that his claims about the role of language in education, and the differential success of children from different social strata were effectively claims about underlying psychological processes, and the relationship between language and thought. In attempting to bridge the gap between macro-sociological analyses and individual performance, he sought to draw on existing work in various parts of psychology including the newly emerging discipline of psycholinguistics. Many of these developments were happening in his local academic milieu in London, and he drew on a broad literature. Ultimately, his foray into psychology proved unsuccessful. This was due to a failure to generate the right kind of conceptual clarity necessary for the operational definitions in this type of psychological study. The perspective he offered, however, has merit, and subsequent work has suggested that the failure of his psychological studies was not necessarily a failure of his general proposals.
© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin
Articles in the same Issue
- Re-examining Bernstein: Class, codes, and language in a multilingual/multicultural world
- General theorizing on language, society, and education: Basil Bernstein, Goldilocks, and/or the Energizer bunny
- Re-reading and rehabilitating Basil Bernstein
- Pause for thought: Why Bernstein was not a psycholinguist
- On the relevance of Bernstein for German-speaking Switzerland
- Re-examining Bernstein: From peer-group ways of speaking to ‘Schriftsprache’ – a study of Turkish-German ‘Hauptschule’ students in Mannheim
- Codes, code-switching, and context: Style and footing in peer group bilingual play
- Bernstein, educational change, and gendered language
- Book reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Re-examining Bernstein: Class, codes, and language in a multilingual/multicultural world
- General theorizing on language, society, and education: Basil Bernstein, Goldilocks, and/or the Energizer bunny
- Re-reading and rehabilitating Basil Bernstein
- Pause for thought: Why Bernstein was not a psycholinguist
- On the relevance of Bernstein for German-speaking Switzerland
- Re-examining Bernstein: From peer-group ways of speaking to ‘Schriftsprache’ – a study of Turkish-German ‘Hauptschule’ students in Mannheim
- Codes, code-switching, and context: Style and footing in peer group bilingual play
- Bernstein, educational change, and gendered language
- Book reviews
