ABSTRACT
Moving off to university, set free for the first time. I can no longer be categorised because of where I live. Trying to understand how behaviourists might explain socially undesirable behaviour, like delinquency or gang violence, things that I might know something about first-hand, discovering Chomsky and Whorf and the power of language for giving us an insight into the human mind and how with language we can change the meaning of a situation and then adapt our behaviour accordingly. But how might this apply to the uses of language that I was familiar with? Then finding a way of accessing the thinking that underpins language by studying unfilled pauses in speech and this becomes my first major research topic. But also discovering that a well-known sociologist, Basil Bernstein, had tried to use this same measure to identify the ‘restricted’ linguistic code of the working class, which he saw as instrumental to their lack of educational success. I critique his work which is highly flawed. I feel almost deliberately so.
