On the relevance of Bernstein for German-speaking Switzerland

This article assesses the relevance of Basil Bernstein for German-speaking Switzerland. It argues that Bernstein is potentially relevant for German-speaking Switzerland in light of contemporary studies which highlight a connection between social background and differential school achievement. After contextualising Bernstein's theoretical outlook and critically reflecting upon his use of a static concept of social class, it explores past and present applications of Bernstein. The paper thereby shows that the uptake of Bernstein's outlook was and continues to be minimal for the Swiss German context and reasons for this conclusion are explored. In the final sections of the article connections between social background and differential school achievement are explored for contemporary German-speaking Switzerland. On the basis of this analysis, the paper concludes by arguing that while aspects of Basil Bernstein's theoretical outlook are potentially relevant for the Swiss German context, they need to be reassessed in light of the awareness of the variety of interdependent factors which can and do influence the performance of children and adolescents at schoo

Re-reading and rehabilitating Basil Bernstein

This article constitutes a re-reading of and an attempt to rehabilitate Basil Bernstein, both of which are important in light of the interpretation of Bernstein as a proponent of the verbal deficit view, and the general discrediting of his work on social class differences in the British educational system, as related to what he later called ‘codes’, by scholars like Jensen (Social class and verbal learning, Holt, 1968) and Labov (The logic of non-standard English, Georgetown University Press, 1970), in particular. Exploring whether the international criticism of Bernstein was justified entails both an analysis of articles written by Jensen (Social class and verbal learning, Holt, 1968) and Labov (The logic of non-standard English, Georgetown University Press, 1970) and by Bernstein, notably ‘Language and social class’ and ‘A critique of the concept of compensatory education’, both published in the first volume of Class, codes and control (Bernstein, Class, codes and control, Volume 1. Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language, Schocken Books, 1971). The article argues for the importance of contextualising Bernstein's thoughts on language and society within the socio-political climate framing his scholarship and the development of his ideas as a whole. We show that much of the interpretation of Bernstein is, in fact, a misinterpretation, for which Bernstein was only partly at fault. By rehabilitating some of Bernstein's ideas, it is possible to argue for their relevance today, especially with reference to salient connections between socio-cultural background and performance at school. Furthermore, Labov and Bernstein may not have been so far apart in their thinking as has previously been assumed

Ethics in Pragmatics

This paper compiles a series of useful resources, which should act as pointers for decisionmaking processes for ethics in pragmatics.We show why ethical considerations are central to good academic practice, and key to protecting the interlocutors and informants whose practices we wish to study. In doing do, we advocate adopting an understanding of ethical decision making as a process, and not the result of a single decision made at the outset of research (cf. e.g., Markham and Buchanan, 2012). As we delineate in this chapter, this approach is key, given that there are not always straightforward, easy solutions to ethical desiderata. To ensure that scholars can benefit from the ethical-decision making processes other scholars have undergone, we thus advocate that scholars include brief discussions of the ethical measures underlining the research presented in their work. This transparency would serve to encourage a conversation among scholars within and across research disciplines and for greater recognition of the importance and relevance of seeing ethics as a process

Re-reading and rehabilitating Basil Bernstein

This article constitutes a re-reading of and an attempt to rehabilitate Basil Bernstein, both of which are important in light of the interpretation of Bernstein as a proponent of the verbal deficit view, and the general discrediting of his work on social class differences in the British educational system, as related to what he later called ‘codes', by scholars like Jensen (Social class and verbal learning, Holt, 1968) and Labov (The logic of non-standard English, Georgetown University Press, 1970), in particular. Exploring whether the international criticism of Bernstein was justified entails both an analysis of articles written by Jensen (Social class and verbal learning, Holt, 1968) and Labov (The logic of non-standard English, Georgetown University Press, 1970) and by Bernstein, notably ‘Language and social class' and ‘A critique of the concept of compensatory education', both published in the first volume of Class, codes and control (Bernstein, Class, codes and control, Volume 1. Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language, Schocken Books, 1971). The article argues for the importance of contextualising Bernstein's thoughts on language and society within the socio-political climate framing his scholarship and the development of his ideas as a whole. We show that much of the interpretation of Bernstein is, in fact, a misinterpretation, for which Bernstein was only partly at fault. By rehabilitating some of Bernstein's ideas, it is possible to argue for their relevance today, especially with reference to salient connections between socio-cultural background and performance at school. Furthermore, Labov and Bernstein may not have been so far apart in their thinking as has previously been assume

“Peter is a dumb nut”: Status updates and reactions to them as 'acts of positioning' in Facebook

This paper applies the theoretical concept of ‘acts of positioning’ (Davis and Harré, 1990) to a qualitative and quantitative analysis of 474 Status Updates (SUs) taken from the Facebook Walls of twenty individuals living in Switzerland and the UK. Our aim is to analyze how individuals construct their identities through the use of language. The results show that individuals position themselves in five central ways, i.e., they stress aspects of their personality, pastime endeavors, sense of humor, work and relationship. Through a subsequent analysis of 228 Reactions to Status Updates (RSUs), we also address how these acts are responded to, and thereby demonstrate that individuals predominantly support identity claims made in the SUs. Our paper contributes to existing research on language and identity in Social Network Sites (SNSs), and demonstrates the fruitful application of the concept of ‘acts of positioning’

Disagreements and agreements in personal/diary blogs: A closer look at responsiveness

In this paper, I focus on responsiveness in 185 disagreements and 219 agreements in the comments sections of eight personal/diary blogs. Since the message format of personal/diary blogs is such that responsiveness is not signalled by the system, interlocutors need to make manifest to whom a disagreement or agreement is directed. Bloggers and readers are likely to make use of a variety of means of signaling responsiveness, such as naming, format tying (Muntigl and Turnbull, 1998) and quoting. The are not likely to rely extensively on quoting, as they might in modes in which quoting constitutes a built-in technological property. My analysis of disagreements and agreements highlights that while responsiveness is integral to agreements and disagreements, it does not have to be made explicit in personal/diary blog interactions. I argue that explicitness appears to be associated with the participation framework of blogs, such that there is a greater need to signal responsiveness explicitly when readers address other readers, but a smaller need to signal responsiveness explicitly when readers address bloggers. The paper thus demonstrates how particular social (participation framework) and medium factors (message format and quoting) (Herring, 2007) are tied with the linguistic realisation of disagreements and agreements

Language and power in blogs : interaction, disagreements and agreements

Language and Power in Blogs systematically analyses the discursive practices of bloggers and their readers in eight English-language personal/diary blogs. The main focus is thereby placed on ties between these practices and power. The book demonstrates that the exercise of power in this mode can be studied via the analysis of conversational control (turn-taking, speakership and topic control), coupled with research on agreements and disagreements. In this vein, it reveals that control of the floor is strongly tied not solely to rates of participation, but more strikingly to the types of contributions interlocutors make. With its detailed linguistic analyses and comprehensive theoretical and methodological treatment of language use and power, the book is interesting for researchers and students working within the domains of pragmatics, discourse analysis, text linguistics and corpus linguistics, in both offline and online settings

Introducing relational work in Facebook, discussion boards and New Media events

This paper functions as the introduction to the special issue on ‘relational work in Facebook and discussion boards’. We position our research endeavors within interpersonal pragmatics (see Locher and Graham 2010), by reviewing literature on politeness, impoliteness and relational work in the context of computer-mediated communication. Foregrounding the relational aspect of language, we are particularly interested in establishing the connections between politeness, face and linguistic identity construction. We then position the four papers that form this special issue within this field of research. Two papers contribute to the study of relational work on discussion boards (Kleinke and Boes; Haugh, Chang and Kádár) and two deal with practices on Facebook (Theodoropoulou; Bolander and Locher)

Introduction: Language and Globalization in South and Central Asian Spaces

In this introduction, we outline our approach to the two main themes this interdisciplinary special issue brings together – language and globalization, and South and Central Asian spaces. Arguing for the importance of exploring these topics from multiple, complementary disciplinary angles (sociolinguistic, anthropological and historical), we delineate a conceptualization of language and globalization which both acknowledges the inextricable relationship between language (use and ideology) and processes of globalization (past and present); as well as the challenges this relationship poses for linguistic research. We thereby adopt a viewpoint which underscores the importance of not a priori assuming that any one layer or scale – local, national, transnational, transregional – will be central to the ways language is used to perform or index globalization. To address questions of language and globalization in connection with South and Central Asian spaces, we further underscore our approach to regions as “process geographies”, an outlook which is suggestive of the importance of critically reflecting on the notion of “areas” as potentially unfixed, unstable and oscillating entities