Bernstein and poetics revisited: voice,globalization and education

Abstract

This article engages in a theory of linguistic inequality under conditions of globalization. Starting from a development of the notion of voice as the capacity to make sense, and a development of the organized and patterned `poetic' structure of actual discourse, it analyses data from police interviews with immigrants, witness statements in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and data from classroom learning environments in South Africa and Belgium. Throughout these analyses, we see that detailed attention to poetic patterning is required in order to reconstruct the voice articulated by people whose voice's would otherwise not be heard. This insight has a bearing on our understanding of competence, and issues of competence become more and more pressing in globalizing contexts.