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Dialect Sneakers: Fact andFantasyDr. Viv EdwardsPublished online: 06 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Dr. Viv Edwards (1983) Dialect Sneakers: Fact and Fantasy,Early Years: An International Research Journal, 3:2, 101-110

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Dialect Sneakers: Fact and Fantasy.

Dr. Viv Edwards

The central importance attached to language has led som-? writers

to suggest that homo loquens would be a far more fitting label

than homo sapiens. Language allows us to organises it provides

us with a basis for including certain people' as members of our

group ?.nd excluding others. But the importance of language goes

beyong its straightforward communicative functions - we play with

language, we savour it> on occasions we even endow it with magical

dualities. No-one can doubt the central role which language plays

at every level of our lives. Yet it sometimes happens that its

importance is exaggerated and all ta> often functions and qualities

are attributed to language which cannot be shown to have any basis

in truth. Language becomes the scapegoat for a whole ri\.r\ge of evils

which stem frora other aspects of social organisation.

-, vasti nythology has gjjoivn up around language. Some varieties c.re

thought to be superior, more aesthetically pleasing and more

suitable for educational purposes than others. Some societies or

sub-groups of society are felt to provide a better linguistic

training for their children than others. It is significant, however,

that language abilities are not perceived to be evenly distributed

across groups within society. Rather, 'good language1 is associated

with the socially powerful and 'bad language' with the socially

ivealc. This pattern has led icme professionals to speculate that '

there is a causative relationship between language and educational

success. Close scrutiny of the available evidence, huwever, suggests

alternative explanations.

s of verfofc.1 desriva. *: i" :i

Loiiostanriiiig prejudices about the inferiority of ncii-stanriarrt spetcn

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2.

developed in the 1960's into full-blown theories of linguistic

deprivation! widely espoused by educationalists and psychologists,

though strongly challenged by linguists. The work of Basil Bernstein

on speech codes (see( for example, Bernstein, 1973), or rather the

misinterpretation of his work, played a very important part in this

process on both sides of the Atlantic. It was argued that the

elaborated code gave speakers access to'universalistic' orders of

meaning which were context free, while the restricted code limited

speakers to 'particularistic? orders of meaning which were context

bound. A very close link was made between dialect speakers and the

restricted code on the one hand, and the elaborated code and

standard English speakers on the other. The importance of this

formulation derives from the fact that the use of these codes was

claimed to be linked to different kinds of socialisation, and

different kinds of thinking. In educational terms, this took the

responsibility for the underperformance of working class children

out of the classroom and pat it .very firmly back on to the family.

By a strange coincidence the debate on verbal deprivation coincided

with the influx of New Commonwealth immigrants into Britain. West

Indians, who formed a large part of this group of newcomers, spoke

a variety of English which shared much of its vocabulary but

differed in important respects in its grammar and sound systcr.i.

'•.lie reas English dialects have tended to be labelled as 'careless'

and 'slovenly' (ex. Trudgill, 1974), West Indian language was

dismissed out of hand as 'broken English1. A report prepared by

some very well-intentioned teachers (ATEFO, 1970) included description

such as 'babyish', 'lacking proper grammar' and even 'very relaxed

like the way they wqlk.'

From a purely linguistic point of view statements such &s these

are quite absurd. All .dialects are grar>matical, although their

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3.

rules may not be the same as those of standard English. Yet while

we accept that French operates with different rules from German

or that Hindi constructions are different from those found in Greek,

people are not prepared to apply the same principles in arguments

about dialects of the same language. It is not difficult to see

why this should be the case. Varying degrees of social status are

mirrored in the varying prestige of different dialects, so that

although dialects are equal from a linguistic point of view, from

.a social perspective some are distinctly more equal than others.

It is easy to denonsti"o.te this point. If recordings of BBC journalists

and Scouse and Geordie speakers are played to people with no '

cultural contact with the British, no pattern of preferences emerges.

• ; . - . . • • • . - • . ' !

Exploding the reyths

Dialect speakers are non-verbal

When middle class speakers start listening to,instead of talking ;

about working class speakers,preconceived notions of verbal deprivatic

simply do not stand up to close scrutiny. One of the dimensions

frequently overlooked in early studies was that of situational j

restraints. The fact that young children either failed to respond <

or tended to give minimal responses to adult questions in a formal

setting was interpreted as evidence of a verbal deficit. Pollack (1973

for instance, in a study of three year olds, expresses amazement at

at ithe number of West Indian children who could not give their age ',

or sex when questioned during the course of developmental screening

tests. Alternative explanations, such as a difference in cultural •

expectations which would make young children reluctant to directly :

answer an adult authority figure, are not considered. Nor is the

improbability of the situation taken into account. A little girl '

wearing a dress whose hair was plaited and tied in ribbons might !

simply be incredulous at. being--asked whether she was a girl or a ' I

_ 1 03- •' !

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4.

There is a widespread assumption that working class families simply

do not speak to their children either often enough or in the right

way. This is reflected in the Bullock Report (1975), 'A Language

for Life' which advocates that health visitors should urge parents

to "bathe children in language1.Herbstein (198O) describes a project

in the Ladywood area of Birmingham involving health visitors, speech

therapists and social workers where contact is made with mothers

in supermarkets and children are distributed with 'Mum, talk to me1

stickers. The rationale for this scheme is that'inner city children

are simply not being spoken to enough by their parents in their

vital early years'.

It is interesting to speculate how much conclusions sush as this are

based on casual rather than careful observation. Equally important

is the need to guard against an ethnocentric and middle class bias

in what we do observe. Me tend to assume that there is only one

acceptable model for language learning. Cross-cultural study, however,

shows that there are many possibilities (cf. Saville-Troike, 1982).

Talbert's (1969) study of black families in St. Louis is interesting

in this respect. Her observations confirmed that there is relatively

little verbal interaction between parents and children, but she

points out that —

The child was privy to the continual exchange of

information between adults concerning problems,

aspirations and often feelings and comments about

the child himself. The child is then learning,

not by direct and elaborate explanations, but rather

by exposure, listening and peer group interaction.

2. The main gain of attendance at nursery is 'improved language'

The most important work in this area in a British context was

Tirard et al.'s (1980) study of the language of four year old

children at hone and at school. They found that tlie nain differences

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5.

in children's language occurred between home and school and that

differences in language use between working and middle class

children in the home setting were very small or absent. At home

conversations were frequently longer and more equally balanced

between adult and child. Children asked more questions and answered

adults more frequently. In view of the fact that mothers in the

study played much more with their children, talked to them nuch

more and answered nany more questions than did the teachers, the

researchers understandably suggest that professionals' advice on

how to talk to children may often be wide of the mark.

How and why parents talk to their children is the

resultant of many complex factors, notably status

relationships within^the family, and also what

seems important to them to communicate. This in turn

is likely to depend on a whole set of underlying

attitudes, including their belief about what the •. :•

children are going to need to function effectively

in society. Ouite aside, then, from whether it is

wise to make people self-conscious about the way they

talk to their children, it seems likely thixt

intervention at this superficial level will be

ineffective(p.SO).

ei kinds of differences and the asymmetry in relationships between

professionals and children discussed in this work can be clearly

illustrated by these brief extracts from conversations with a

rising five year old on the subject of conkersi first with his

best friend, then reporting the incident to his father and finally

when questioned by his teacher. ,

A. Dafydd and Sally

U: This is Jack's, that's mine.

S: Let's play it then

D: I'll just see which is the longest. Oh yes...this is Jack's and

this is mine. You can te l l B'ecause Jack's is the longest ;\nc\

mine is the shortest thing.

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6.

S: Look at that funny one. I can see you...

D: Can I see through it? I can see you. Let's play a

funny game.

5: No we're going to play shops. We're the bad babies and we

steal these.

D: Oh yes, let's play that game and pretend the police'•' is nearly about

to catch us and we bong them on the head because they've taken

their helmet offto scratch their head and we bong them on the head

with the conkers.

3. Pafydd and his father

D: I'll tell you about Sally's conker. She's got a metal conker.

F: A what?

D: A metal conkerJ

F: Really?

D: Yes (laughing)... it' s really- a yoyo! I'll show you. j*. I've got

a conker. It's a surprise.

F: '.vow. .. look, what's that it's hanging on?

D; String.

F: How did you get the string in, there?

D: Jenny did it. In the hole, see....I'11 show you.'

C. 'Jafydd and his teacher

T: '.'.hat's this, then?

D: Conker.

T: Did you collect it yesterday when we went out for oui nature walk7

D: I collected acorn in its...

Ts Oh, in its shell. It sits in a sort of little cup, doesn't it?

Have you got any conkers at hone?

D: Yes ' '

T: How nany have you got?

D: I've got one on a string.

T: On a string? What do you do with that one?

I ) : I t ' s •. . •

T: It's to play a gane. U'hat sort of game do you play with it?

D: You have a conker on a string and you try to smash the other one.

T: And who do you play that with?

D: Daddy

T: Daddy. Ceri's too young to play 1 expect

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)

Dafydd's conversation with his teacher gives no indication of

what a talkative and verbally adept child he is. Assessment of

a child's language must clearly be based on something much

broader than interaction with teacher. What is mote, the

imbalance in talk between the professional and the child hardly

supports the widely held view thati because of their special

training , nursery and infant teachers are well equipped to promote

language development. Wood, iVc.Vahon and Crounstoun( 1980) in

I'.'orkinq with Under Fives note a similar imbalance in conversations

between many of the play-group leaders and nursery teachers who

took part in their research. They suggest, however, that a move from

the adult domination of the conversation can serve to stimulate a no;

active contribution from the children and that adults who offer

their own personal views without bombarding the children with

questions do best.

3. Dialect speakers do not value language

There is thus no evidence to support the assertion that working

families talk less or to less effect than middle class children,

though it would seen that they are more inhibited in certain more .

formal situations such as school and nursery. Dialect speakers also

take the sane joy in language as speakers of standard English as

is denonstrated by working class trades union orators, raconteurs

like Vax Boyce and Jimmy Connolly and musicians and poets like

the Tyneside pit poet, Tommy Armstrong. !«'est Indian society, too,

has an inportant oral tradition which attaches great importance

to verbal skills, i'est Indians are often brilliant story tellers

and have an impressive repertoire of proverbs, riddles, songs

and rhymes. This is faithfully recorded in publications like

Elder's Song Gares from Trinidad and Tobago, Thomas' Rain Falling

.Sun Shining and Caneron And Connolly's '-ango Spice. It is all the

nore surprising, therefore, to note Pollack's (1972) conclusion

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B.

that 'Vest Indian children could have no tradition of nursery rhymes

because they failed to complete rhymes when offered the first line.

Conclusions

To sum up, our reactions to the language of dialect speakers, whether

they be working class Wiiitesror British Blacks, have tended to be

extremely negative. All too often linguistic differences have been

labelled deficiencies and we have evaluated the linguistic

environment of dialect speakers in a very blinkered way. Equally

worrying, educational underperformance on the part of dialect

speakers has been attributed to alleged linguistic deficiencies,

and has sometimes served to deflect researchers from other possible

causative factors, such as poor housing, low income and unemployment.

Nor can ive afford to overlook the effect of low teacher expectation

andi in the case of Black children, racism both intentional and

unintentional (cf. Rampton, 1981).

Language can be seen as something of a red herring in this context I

and has often wrongly served as a focus for remedial teaching

with dialect speakers. Children'are.

language learners par excellence. All that is necessary is exposure

to spontaneous speech in natural settings and theie is no evidence

that the vast majority of children from all backgrounds do not receive

such exposure. An atmosphere which supports and acknowledges children'

language is far more conducive to learning than one which criticises

and rejects. And conversations ih:which adults share information

rather than bombard with questions are more likely to give rise

to opportunities for children to demonstrate and practise their

developing languge skills.

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9.

Suggestions for further reading

Many of the ideas contained in this article are developed in a very

readable way in the following books and papers:

W. Labov (1972) 'The Logic of non-standard English'. In N. Keddie

( ed. ) Tinker, Tailor The Nyth of Cultural

Deprivation Harmondsworth: Penguin

P. Trudgill(1975) Accent, Dialect and the School. London: Edward Arnold

J. Edwards (1979) Language and Disadvantage. London: Edward Arnold

V. Edwards (1979) The West Indian Language Issue in British Schools

London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

D. Sutcliffe(1982)British Black English. Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Bibliography

Association of Teachers of English to Pupils from Overseas (ATEFO)

(Birmingham Branch) (1970) work Group on West Indian pupils Report

Bernstein, B. (1973) Class, Codes and Control. London: Paladin

Bullock, Sir A. (1975) A Language for Life. London: HMSO

Cameron, G. & Connolly, Y. (1981) Mango Spice. London:AeC Black

Elder, J.(1964) Song Games from Trinidad and Tobago. Fort of Spain,

Trinidad: National Cultural Council Publications.

Harbstein, D. (1980)'In need of sanll talk'. Sunday Times,

Pollack, M. (1972) Today's Three Vear Olds in London. London: Heinemann,

Saville-Troike, M. (19e2,) The, Ethnoraphy of Communnicaution An Introuction An lntrouiction.

Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Rampton, A. (1981) West Indian Children in our Schools. London: HMSO.

Talbert, C.(1969) 'Sociolinguistic Analysis of Teachers and Fupils'.

Faper delivered at the 1969 Annual Meeting of the

American Anthropological Association,

Tizard, B, Carmichael, H, Hughes, M. & Pinkerton, G. (1980). Four

year olds talking to mothers and teachers'. In L. Hersov

& M. Berger (eds.) Language and Language Disorders in

Childhood. Oxford: Fergamon Press-1O9-

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10.

Thomas, O.(1975) Rain Falling, Sun Shining. London: Bogle l'Cuverture

publications.

Wood, D, McMahon, L, & Cranstoun, Y.(1980) '.vorkinq with Under Fives.

London: Grant McIntyre.

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