Basil Bernstein's sociology of language applied to education: deficits, differences and bewitchment

Abstract

Gurra was the town's ‘wise woman’. She had hidden powers; she could heal sicknesses and see into the future, but it was also generally known that Gurra had the evil eye and a spiked tongue, and could cast spells on people, change their course of life and ruin their happiness. There were several cases known in which Gurra had made difficulties for people with her arts ‐ or even driven them out of their minds. Tante Helen: This is of course just a lot of feeble‐minded talk. I knew the Sexton's widow and her daughter myself. The old lady was an outgoing and sincerely God‐fearing person and knew several old household remedies and was familiar with popular pharmacopeia, which after all is not merely to be sneered at. That she should be in league with the Devil and be able to bewitch people, or that among other things she took my poor uncle Andres Ruprechtsen's life through witchcraft, I consider to be quite unfounded assertions from unenlightened and childish people, but of course there were such people at the...