Prueba de medición del grado de satisfacción:

The configuration of the force fields and the production of influence follow an imaginary schema adapted from Bernstein’s model of recontextualisation, as developed by Robertson (Bernstein 1996, Robertson et al. 2004). In examining how knowledge becomes circumscribed and legitimated in ways which delegitimise or marginalise other social possibilities of knowing and recognition, Bernstein posits an extended systemic model, refined over years of re- theorisation based on systematic reflection on iterations of empirical application. This study draws on just one thread of that theorisation. In the case of spelling, the variety of orthographic practice and social possibility evident in an exhaustive scholarly historical record such as

OED3, or the contemporary vernacular variation and possibility indexed by a viral ‘WIKI’

reference source such as Urban Dictionary, are defined, filtered, reshaped and regulated into the more restricted option of authorised standard forms. These restricted but legitimated representations are evaluated and distributed by a cycle of institutional practices instantiated by the triangular ‘relay’ of authoritative discourse, print technologies and schooling. Here I am

interested in establishing the operation of what Bernstein terms the ‘symbolic ruler of consciousness’ as it applies to orthographic choice.

Bernstein’s construct of recontextualisation allows a way into understanding Sebba’s ‘regimes of orthography in different types of writing’ as these may operate at the more localised level of an interlocutor’s orthographic choice at the point of text entry. It also has some bearing on accounting for the decisions of choice in the here-and-now as these are influenced in the longer run of familiar, naturalised, ‘second-nature’ orthographic practices. These function as a form of orthographic habitus, and its enregisterment into conventional expectation, or possible codification. These considerations focusing on considering the interlocutor’s accounts of attitudes and practices, are based on an analytical framework which considers the means by which Sebba’s regimes are enacted by what might be described as a collectively held, and individually realised, policing of orthographic choice. In seeking to understand these practices as they are interiorised and practised in the sense of what is orthographically possible, Bernstein’s concept of recontextualising fields is presented in conjunction with an adaptation of that argument about the destabilising potential of new social and literate practices built around digitally-mediated vernaculars; here SMS interaction between young people in recreational contexts. Bernstein’s argument about pedagogic discourse acting as a ‘ruler of consciousness‘ is applied to the impetus to ‘deregulated’ literacy, and permissive orthographic choice, inherent in the social practices around the altered materiality of digitally-mediated vernacular interaction.

PRF: PED AGOG ICAL REC ONTEXT UALISI NG FIEL D OR F: OF_FIC IA L REC ON TEXT UA LISI NG FIEL D teacher pupils pupil class PD = ID/RD Pedagogic discourse is instructional discourse embedded in regulative discourse ‘Pedagogic Discourse consists of distributive rules, recontextualising rules and evaluative rules, functioning together as a ‘symbolic ruler, ruling consciousness, in the sense of having power over it, and ruling, in the sense of measuring the legitimacy of consciousness.’

(Bernstein 1996:114)

Bernstein argues that routine pedagogic practices function as a ‘relay’ of permissible ideas which restrict consciousness by legitimating what counts as knowledge. The grammar of the pedagogic device ‘official discourse’ consists of:

distributive rules, recontextualising rules, and evaluative rules ... functioning together as a symbolic ruler, ruling consciousness, in the sense of having power over it, and ruling, in the sense of measuring the legitimacy of consciousness (Bernstein 1996;114).

Bernstein argues this is a continually contested dynamic between competing social groups, a struggle between social groups for ownership of the device’ as a means of perpetuating their power through discursive means and establishing, or attempting to establish their own ideological representations (ibid.).

[In these discursive means] pedagogic discourse is an instructional discourse

embedded in a dominating regulative discourse (ID/RD). (1996;103;161)

In other words, the instructional, legitimating discourse of ideas, argument and curriculum is always predicated on, and embedded within, a regulative discourse which seeks to arrange, direct and contain social behaviour. The rationales for the choices around instructional discourse are secondary to the issues relating to the determination of power and control. In the representation above, this is shown by the way the official recontextualising field is mediated through the pedagogical recontextualising field. Bernstein’s model is primarily concerned with the entity of ‘the state’ as this acts to pressure and control agency through the means at its disposal, including mass schooling, or what Bernstein terms as ‘pedagogic discourse’. The dialectic is worked out in the contestations of the relationship between the ‘Official Recontextualising Field’ (ORF), created and dominated by the state for the construction and surveillance of state pedagogic discourse, and its mediation by the Pedagogic Recontextualising Field (PRF) ‘consisting of trainers of teachers, writers of textbooks, curricular guides, etc [sic.] specialised media and their authors’ (ibid. 117).

The regulative dimensions of such processes of standardisation can be observed in the state- curren and past educational practices in the UK in hegemonic codification and enforcement of licensed, linguistic usage in lexis, grammar and orthography. By such interpretation, this codification and its transmission stand in representationally as an enactment of national unity and controlled social solidarity (cf Anderson 1991). This is filtered, interpolated and mediated by agents of the state in the arrangements for teaching spelling, for instance. Such a pedagogic recontextualisation imposes a restricted recognition of the nation-state defined standard forms recognised as permissible. In concrete terms, practices such as those promote the learning and valuing of standard forms and excluding or marginalising the representation of all other varieties, including those arising out of dialectal or sociolectal variation, popular culture, or influenced by ‘unformed’ behaviours of those who have not undergone, or responded sufficiently to, state formation of literacy. Such ideology might be realised by such practices as: national and classroom spelling tests as numerical indices of literate competence; corrections of student errors in standardised realisations in their writing; therapeutic repair routines, such as

‘look, cover, check’; or mnemonic rituals for remembering standard forms without seeking to understand their provenance or origins in sociohistorical contestation, and a representation of spelling in texts studied in school which excludes those featuring variational forms. Such a model has some application to the early privileging and treatment of spelling by the state in mass schooling, for example, in England, intensifying following the Education Act of 1870 and continuing to the time of writing (e.g. Sullivan 1847, Peters 1995, Ott 2010, Stone 2014). 57