The speech of working class children, Bernstein contends, represents a restricted code- a way of using language containing many unstated assumptions which speakers expect others to know. A restricted code is a type of speech tied to its own cultural setting. Many working class people live in a strong familial or neighborhood culture in which values and norms are taken for granted and not expressed in language. Parents tend to socialize their children directly by the use of rewards or reprimands to correct their behavior. Language in a restricted code is more suitable for communication about practical experience than for discussion of more abstract ideas, processes or relationship. Restricted code speech is thus characteristics of children growing up in lower-class families, and of peer groups in which they spend their time. Speech is oriented towards norms of the group, without anyone easily being able to explain why they follow the patterns of behavior they do.

The language development of middle-class children, by contrast, according to Bernstein, involves the acquisition of an elaborated code – a style of speaking in which the meanings of words can be individualized to suit the demands of particular situations. The ways in which the children from middle-class background learn to use language are less bound to particular contexts; the child is able more easily to generalize and express abstract ideas. Thus, middle-class mothers, when controlling their children, frequently explain the reasons and principles that underlie their reactions to the child’s behavior. While a working-class mother might tell a child off for wanting to eat too many sweets by simply saying ‘No more sweets for you!’ , a middle class mother is more likely to explain that eating too many sweet is bad for one’s health and the state of one’s teeth.

Children who have acquired elaborated codes of speech, Bernstein proposes, are more able to deal with the demands of formal academic education than those confined to restricted codes. This does not imply that working- class children have an ‘inferior’ type of speech, or that their codes of language are ‘deprived’. Rather the way in which they use speech clashes with the academic culture of the school. Those who have mastered elaborated codes fit much more easily into the school environment.

There is evidence to back up Bernstein’s theory, although its validity is still debated. Joan Tough studied the language of working-class and middle-class children, finding systematic differences. She backs up Bernstein’s thesis that working-class children generally have less experience of having their questions answered, or of being offered explanations about the reasoning of others (Tough 1976). The same conclusion was reached in subsequent research by Barbara Tizard and Martin Hughes (1984).

Bernstein’s ideas help us to understand why those from certain socio-economic backgrounds tend to be ‘underachievers’ at school. The following traits have been associated with restricted code speech, all of them inhibiting a child’s educational chances:

The child probably receives limited responses to questions asked at home, and therefore is likely to be both less well informed and less curious about the wider world than those mastering elaborated codes.

The child will find it difficult to respond to the unemotional and abstract language used in teaching, as well as to appeals to general principles of school discipline.

Much of what the teacher says is likely to be incomprehensible, using language in a way the child is not accustomed to. The child may attempt to cope with this by translating the teacher’s language into something she or he is familiar with- but then could fail to grasp the very principles the teachers intends to convey.