Bernstein-øjeblikket – en kontrafaktisk historie

Abstract

The paper is a written and revised version of a lecture given on the occasion of my receiving the degree of honorary doctor at Uppsala University. It deals with the history and development of sociolinguistics as a discipline and contrasts the two early paradigms competing for hegemony: The code theory by Basil Bernstein and the variationist linguistics, forged and exemplified by William Labov. The argument is simple: We would have had a different discipline if the Bernstein approach had been more successful. First, the discipline would have been more integrated into sociology and probably less into linguistics. Secondly, some of the pressing concerns as to the role of language in the educational system and the role of language in socialization in general would have been more central to the effort. This raises the question of whether the future of sociolinguistics will become more Bernsteinian.