Encoding in Diaries:

Joan N. Radner and Susan S. Lanser's research on coding in women's folk culture provides a useful framework for analyzing strategies used by diarists in their texts. Radner and Lanser define code not only as "the system of language rules through which communication is possible" but also as a "set of signals–words, forms, behaviors, signifiers of some kind–that protect the creator from the consequences of openly expressing particular messages" (23). Radner and Lanser emphasize that "because ambiguity is a necessary feature of every coded act, any instance of coding risks reinforcing the very ideology it is designed to critique" (3). Encoding, as I am using the term, means the transmission of the writer's message in an oblique rather than direct manner. Encoding can take a variety of syntactic and semantic forms. For example, a diarist might speak indirectly by deleting the pronoun "I" from her text. She might contradict one statement with another. She might deviate from standard American English sentence structure or (particularly in the case of pre-twentieth -century diaries) orthography. She might use a sophisticated code of visual symbols. She might employ silences in choosing not to write explicitly (or at all) about such taboo subjects as sexuality, pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. 

Much recent work on encoding and decoding has been influenced by Basil Bernstein's landmark study, Class, Codes and Control (1971). Bernstein's research involved studying codes and speech variants among speakers of different classes in England to determine what possible influences the socialization process might have on language codes. Bernstein hypothesized that working-class individuals would be more likely to use what he defined as a "restricted code" while middle-class individuals would be more likely to use what he defined as an "elaborated code": "A restricted code is generated by a form of social relationship based upon a range of closely shared identifications self-consciously held by the members. An elaborated code is generated by a form of social relationship which does not necessarily presuppose such shared, self-consciously held identifications with the consequence that much less is taken for granted. The codes regulate the area of discretion available to a speaker and so differently constrain the verbal signalling of individual difference" (108). Based on his research, Bernstein posited that the change from the restricted to the elaborated code involves a shift from authority/piety to identity (165). While Bernstein's research provides much food for thought, it is limited in several respects: it presupposes class as static rather than as dynamic; it is based on a research sample comprised entirely of adolescent boys in London; and it explores spoken but not written language.