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SEMIOTICS: THE BASICS
the passive voice), more adjectives, relatively complex syntax and
the use of the pronoun ‘I’. Bernstein’s argument was that middleclass
children had access to both of these codes while working-class
children had access only to restricted codes. Such clear-cut distinctions
and correlations with social class are now widely challenged
by linguists (Crystal 1987, 40). However, we still routinely use such
linguistic cues as a basis for making inferences about people’s social
backgrounds.
Social differentiation is observable not only from linguistic
codes, but from a host of non-verbal codes. A survey of non-verbal
codes is not manageable here, and the interested reader should consult
some of the classic texts and specialist guides to the literature
(see Going Further pp. 238–9, this volume). In the context of the
present text a few examples must suffice to illustrate the importance
of non-verbal codes. Non-verbal codes which regulate a ‘sensory
regime’ are of particular interest. Within particular cultural contexts
there are, for instance, largely inexplicit ‘codes of looking’ which
regulate how people may look at other people (including taboos on
certain kinds of looking). Such codes tend to retreat to transparency
when the cultural context is one’s own. ‘Children are instructed to
“look at me”, not to stare at strangers, and not to look at certain parts
of the body . . . People have to look in order to be polite, but not to
look at the wrong people or in the wrong place, e.g. at deformed
people’ (Argyle 1988, 158). In Luo in Kenya one should not look at
one’s mother-in-law; in Nigeria one should not look at a high-status
person; among some South American Indians during conversation
one should not look at the other person; in Japan one should look at
the neck, not the face; and so on (Argyle 1983, 95).
The duration of the gaze is also culturally variable: in ‘contact
cultures’ such as those of the Arabs, Latin Americans and southern
Europeans, people look more than the British or white Americans,
while black Americans look less (Argyle 1988, 158). In contact cultures
too little gaze is seen as insincere, dishonest or impolite, while
in non-contact cultures too much gaze (‘staring’) is seen as threatening,
disrespectful and insulting (Argyle 1983, 95 and 1988, 165).
Within the bounds of the cultural conventions, people who avoid
one’s gaze may be seen as nervous, tense, evasive and lacking in