Presentation of Bernstein’s Deficit Hypothesis

Sociolinguistics has tried to work towards a solution to shortcomings in education. In the USA, linguists were aware of the fact that children in poor districts did not receive the expected benefits from public education (cf.Stewart 1966; Labov et al. 1968; Wolfram 1969, and Fasold 1972b). Similar steps were taken in Britain; linguists applied the results of their linguistic studies to problems in the deducation of the children of the working class (cf. Trudill 1975a). Among the prominent sociolinguists in this area was B.Bernstein whose Deficit hypothesis gave the first impetus to an investigation of speech barriers. He claimed that two kinds of English “code” could be distinguished: „elaborated code‟ and „restricted code‟. Bernstein indicated in his studies that children from the working class were limited to restricted code, while those of the middle class to the elaborated code. Accordingly, the success of members of a society and their access to social privileges is directly dependent on the degree of organization of their linguistic messages. In this paper, the author discusses Bernstein‟s work together with some of the numerous publications on his hypothesis of speech codes to arrive at the results which are specific to social class.