Based on structured interviews with seven year old children from working and middle class backgrounds, Basil Bernstein reached a hypothesis that there were two main types of language used: a ‘restricted code’ and an ‘elaborated code’. He argued that children from working class backgrounds used the restricted code characterised by limited vocab and simple grammar, whilst children from middle class backgrounds used the elaborated code. 

His views were criticised by William Labov, who found that class differences between interviewer and interviewee affected the validity of Bernstein’s findings. Labov argued that if their linguistic styles matched, the children from working class backgrounds would have talked more.

For example, in his own study of the language of black American children, when he used a more formal technique the children appeared to be tongue-tied and ‘linguistically deprived’. But after changing to a more informal, relaxed style, the children opened up more and spoke confidently showing that they were not at all linguistically deprived. 

Structured interviews are not exactly going to be very revealing of a person’s linguistic ability anyway due to their close-endedness and inflexibility. As you can see, they are also subject to interviewer bias. 

The triple-systems theory is that women are oppressed in 3 ways:

• Gender (through *patriarchy)
• Social class (through capitalism)
• Ethnicity (though racism)

Sylvia Walby (1990)

* Male dominance, particularly in society. 

“The emergence of what I term plastic sexuality is crucial to the emancipation implicit in the pure relationship, as well as to women’s claim to sexual pleasure. Plastic sexuality is decentred sexuality, freed from the needs of reproduction. It has its origins in the tendency, initiated somewhere in the late eighteenth century, strictly to limit family size; but it becomes further developed later as the result of the spread of modern contraception and new reproductive technologies. Plastic sexuality can be moulded as a trait of personality and this is intrinsically bound up with the self. At the same time - in principle - it frees sexuality from the rule of the phallus, from the overweening importance of male sexual experience.”
Anthony Giddens (1994)

What he’s saying is that in this day and age, we’re free to create sexual relationships to fit in with our sense of identity, without being restricted by traditional expectations and customs.

The looking glass self is a term coined by Charles Cooley to describe how we create our own sense of social identity. We look to other people for vital clues about who we are and, in a way, we create ourselves based on the judgements and opinions they give us.

The summary of Rosenhan’s study of sane people in inane places (1973)

Paul Connolly (1998) studied an inner-city multi-ethnic primary school to discover ways in which teachers construct a sense of masculinity in boys based on their ethnicities.

Black boys were seen as disruptive under-achievers. Teachers controlled them by punishing them more and channelling their energies into sport. In turn, the boys sought status in non-academic ways like playing football. 

Asian boys were seen as passive, conformist and more ‘feminine’. When they misbehaved, they were seen as silly rather than as a threat. Other boys picked on them to assert their own masculinity and asian boys were considered in need of protection from bullying. 

Bernard Coard (1971, 2005) argued that our curriculum is ethnocentric. That is, that it gives priority to white culture and the English language.

The ethnocentric curriculum could lead to the underachievement of other ethnicities. 

For example, the history curriculum presents whites as the bringers of ‘civilisation’ to ‘primitive’ societies such as African ones. The view portrayed is that blacks are inferior, which undermines black children’s self esteem. 

This is known as institutional racism, as it’s discrimination that’s built into the way schools/colleges work. 

Non-European studies are rare in the British system and non-Christian religions are not promoted in the same way. For example, every Christmas most schools attend a church service. The same can’t be said whenever a Hindu festival comes around, can it? And many primary schools still make kids say ‘grace’, pray before going home and sing hymns in assembly, or they did at least when I was in primary. In Britain, we’re socialised into a vaguely white Christian value system, or it’s at least seen as mainstream. Maybe the continual rise of non-religious (secular) beliefs will sort that out. 

• Erik pigani

To reduce prejudice, we have to acknowledge that it often satisfies some basic need - to have quick answers and stable knowledge people rely on to make sense if the world - psychologies magazine