Inspired by socio-materialist approaches, this paper will explore how we might deepen Bernstein’s code theory by making visible some of the more shadowy influences and echoes in his work. What else comes into view and how can different theoretical worlds gain from dialoguing between the sociolinguistic inflections of code theory and socio-materiality (Fenwick et al. 2011)? Bernstein denied that his code theory was a structuralist theory and therefore within his work there is scope to bring into view moments of transformation. This requires a shift in emphasis onto performativity, and away from representations of knowledge, thus more on realization and less on texts. Bernstein maintained that to specify codes required both an orienting (positionality) and a realisation condition (text) (see Bernstein, 1990, 21) so we can ask how are these two processes inter linked? Given that ‘Class mediates between institutional culture and individuals (Bernstein, 1996, p. 21-22) what happens if we pay closer attention to matter and movement, and imagine how meanings emerge when multiple worlds unite as dynamic assemblages (c.f. Evans and Davies, 2011)? Specifically, Bernstein attempted to develop ‘a more general and more delicate formulation of the generating principles of [these] speech forms, [and] the social relations, (1990, 95). Hasan’s analysis of mother-child interactions drew attention to sensi-bility in her description of the ontogenesis of decontextualized language (2001). Ivinson (2014) drew on material feminism to suggest that language development requires a corporeal and an affective dimension. The argument that we can deepen ‘restricted codes’ will be illustrated using examples from multimodal ethnographic work in working class, ex mining locales in south Wales, to suggest that ‘restricted codes’ bring the world into view in different yet important ways, in comparison to elaborated codes. We can ask what else matters in the way class becomes ‘specifiable as a force’, perhaps as an affective force, or as a psychic defence (Bernstein 1996, 21-22) acting in processes of becoming?

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