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Abstract
Understanding of the 1980 riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico can be improved by emphasizing how language congealed into two distinct codes—one belonging to inmates, the other to prison administrators—that provided their respective users with diametrically opposed views of the world and ways of acting upon it. A code‐based analysis of the riot attempts to overcome some of the shortcomings of both agency‐based and structuralist accounts by stressing the dynamics of agency and structure within code opposition. By so doing, the analysis offers critical diagnostic tools for communication analysts and conflict mediators who may be called upon to intervene in social situations where agents appear to be locked intractably in oppositional conflict.
