Structural determination of pupils' distinct communicative forms and the potentialities of interaction

Abstract

This article attempts to thematise the structural determination of pupils' distinct communicative forms or language games that usually function within the communicative context of a classroom. In particular, it challenges their possible social determination by stressing the transformable character of interaction and communication. On this point the study attempts to elaborate Bernstein's important concept of code, which defines the possible structural determination of pupils' distinct communicative forms (restricted or elaborated), and Wittgenstein's concept of language games, which corresponds to distinct forms of life. In this frame, any form of life seems to produce and determine a distinct form of communication. The study also attempts to elaborate Mead's general issue of symbolic interaction and his important concept of ‘role-taking’, and Habermas' developments of these issues, which attempt to create possibilities for a differentiation and transformation of the socially constructed distinct communicative forms or language games.