Legitimation Code Theory

Erika Matruglio
University of Wollongong
Table of contents

Legitimation Code Theory or LCT is a relatively recent theoretical framework for analysing knowledge practices. As its name suggests, it focusses on the underlying structuring principles upon which claims to legitimacy may be made in social fields of practice. The term “legitimation” in the theory’s title “foregrounds both sociological issues of cooperation and struggles over status, and ontological and epistemological questions of the potentially legitimate nature of practices” (Maton 2016a: 10). That is to say that Legitimation Code Theory is about understanding the bases of achievement in social practices, whether these be visible and explicit, or whether they are unspoken or “go without saying”. While it is a sociological theory of knowledge, and sees knowledge not language as its object of study, LCT nevertheless has insights to offer an audience interested in pragmatics. While finding its roots in sociology of Education, LCT has further developed through interaction with applied linguistics, most notably Systemic Functional Linguistics, and is the first sociological theory to develop tools for text analysis (e.g., MacNaught, Matruglio & Doran in press). LCT can be used to investigate what language (among other things) reveals about knowledge practices, making it a useful tool for application alongside pragmatic and other applied linguistic analyses (see Section 5).

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