13
Sociolinguistics and Education
-
Key Concepts
Language ideologies as an influence on educational programs
Social identities of students as a factor in education
The use of minority languages and dialects in the classroom
Legitimation of minority languages and dialects
Access to English as a global language
Linguists are agreed that no variety of a language is inherently better than any other. They insist that all languages and all varieties of particular languages are equal in that they quite adequately serve the needs of those who use them. (The only exceptions they recognize are pidgin languages, which are by definition restricted varieties; see chapter 5.) A standard variety of a language is 'better' only in a social sense: it has a preferred status; it gives those who use it certain social advantages; and it can increase their opportunities in work and education. Nonstandard varieties tend to produce the opposite effect. These are some of the consequences that follow from elevating one variety and denigrating others, but there is no reason to suppose that any one of the varieties is linguistically more valuable than any other. If the capital cities of England and France had been York and Avignon respectively, Standard English and Standard French today would be quite different from what they actually are, and speakers of Received Pronunciation and Parisian French would in such
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Seventh Edition. Ronald Wardhaugh and Janet M. Fuller. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
340
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
circumstances be regarded as speaking somewhat peculiar local dialects that would not be very helpful 'if you want to get on in the world.'
This attitude that linguists have toward different languages and their different varieties is not one that everyone else shares. Many people believe that some languages or varieties are better than others, for example, that some languages are particularly 'beautiful,' others 'primitive,' some dialects more expressive,' others 'deficient,' and so on. In other words, it is widely believed that you can be advantaged or disadvantaged not just socially or aesthetically, but also intellectually, by the accident of which language or variety of a language you happen to speak. This Discourse is especially prevalent in discussions about education.
Sociolinguists have long been interested in how language plays a role in education, and here the overlap with linguistic anthropology is extensive in terms of the themes addressed and the literature in the field. One prominent scholar is Dell Hymes, whose work on other topics we have already introduced (see the discussion of ethnography of communication in chapter 9). After Hymes' death in 2009, Nancy Hornberger wrote the following tribute to him:
Early in his career, Hymes called on those of us "for whom 'the way things are' is not reason enough for the way things are" to reinvent anthropology, asking of anthropology what we ask of ourselves - "responsiveness, critical awareness, ethical concern, human relevance, a clear connection between what is to be done and the interests of mankind" (1969:7). Forty years on and more, it is clear that Hymess scholarship and political advocacy have in no small measure led the way in that task - with a social justice impact reaching beyond anthropology to educational policy and practice and, far more importantly, to the lives and well-being of countless learners and teachers, individuals, and communities around the world. (Hornberger 2011, 316-17)
In this chapter we will take up the relationships among sociolinguistics, education, and social justice. We will address three main topics, all of which involve the hegemony of standard languages and the role education should play with regard to the standard language ideology. First, we will look at issues of social dialects and how ways of speaking associated with lower socio-economic classes and ethnic groups are often viewed as disadvantages in education. Second, we will consider issues of multilingualism in education, again noting that there is a history in many places of viewing minority languages as a disadvantage in terms of education. Finally, we will examine educational issues involved in the growth of English world-wide.
All three of these topics involve the concept of linguistic inequality, which is denned by Bonnin (2013, 502) as the unequal social valuation of particular ways of speaking, which, due to the indexical nature of language, reproduces wider social, cultural, and economic inequalities. In the following sections we will revisit ideas we have discussed in previous chapters, for example, standardization (chapter 2), monoglossic ideologies (chapter 4) and critical perspectives on the study of language (chapter 11).
Sociolinguistics and Education
341
Social Dialects and Education
This section addresses a number of interrelated questions about language and education. What role do children's home dialects and discourse patterns play in their access to educational opportunities? What is the role of schooling vis-a-vis language? Many people would argue that the role of education is to teach children how to use the standard variety. Even if we accept this perspective, how can educational programs make all children's home languages and cultures a resource they can use in learning?
Restricted and elaborated codes
An early perspective on the role of social class in education can be found in the work of Bernstein (1961, 1971, 1972, 1990). Bernstein's views of the relationship between language and culture are influenced by his reading of Whorf (see chapter 1). Bernstein regards language as something which both influences culture and is in turn influenced by culture. A child growing up in a particular linguistic environment and culture learns the language of that environment and that culture, and then proceeds to pass on that learning to the next generation. Bernstein believes that there is a direct and reciprocal relationship between a particular kind of social structure, in both its establishment and its maintenance, and the way people in that social structure use language. Moreover, this relationship is a continuing one; it is socially reproduced and is handed down from generation to generation. For Bernstein, a particular kind of social structure leads to a particular kind of linguistic behavior, and this behavior in turn reproduces the original social structure. Consequently, a cycle exists in which certain social patterns produce certain linguistic patterns, which in turn reproduce the social patterns, and so on.
Individuals also learn their social roles through the process of communication. This process differs from social group to social group, and, because it is different in each social group, existing role differences are perpetuated in society. Of particular concern to Bernstein, therefore, are the quite different types of language that different social groups employ. He claims that there are two quite distinct varieties of language in use in society. He calls one variety elaborated code and the other variety restricted code. According to Bernstein, these codes have very different characteristics. For example, the elaborated code makes use of 'accurate' - in the sense of standard - grammatical order and syntax to regulate what is said; uses complex sentences that employ a range of devices for conjunction and subordination; employs prepositions to show relationships of both a temporal and a logical nature; shows frequent use of the pronoun I; uses with care a wide range of adjectives and adverbs; and allows for remarks to be qualified. According to Bernstein (1961, 169), the elaborated code 'is a language use which points to the possibilities inherent in a complex conceptual hierarchy for the organizing of experience.' In contrast, restricted
342
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
code employs short, grammatically simple, and often unfinished sentences of poor' - meaning nonstandard - syntactic form; uses a few conjunctions simply and repetitively; employs little subordination; tends toward a dislocated presentation of information; is rigid and limited in the use of adjectives and adverbs; makes infrequent use of impersonal pronoun subjects; confounds reasons and conclusions; makes frequent appeals to 'sympathetic circularity,' for example, You know?; uses idioms frequently; and is 'a language of implicit meaning.'
Bernstein says that every speaker of the language has access to the restricted code because all employ this code on certain occasions; for example, it is the language of intimacy between familiars. However, not all social classes have equal access to the elaborated code, particularly lower working-class people and their children, who are likely to have little experience with it. According to Bernstein (1972, 173), the consequences of this unequal distribution are considerable. In particular, children from the lower working class are likely to find themselves at a disadvantage when they attend school, because the elaborated code is the medium of instruction in schooling. When schools attempt to develop in children the ability to manipulate elaborated code, they are really involved in trying to change cultural patterns, and such involvement may have profound social and psychological consequences for all engaged in the task. Educational failure is likely to result.
Bernstein believes that the British social-class system does not allow the lower working class easy access to the elaborated code. Members of that class most frequently use the restricted code, which limits the intellectual horizons of its speakers. We should note that in Bernstein's view it is the lower working class, not the whole of the working class, who are penalized in this way; too often his work is interpreted as a claim about the working class as a whole. Of course, Bernstein and his followers must accept some of the responsibility for this misunderstanding since they generally omit the word lower and appear to be discussing the whole of the working class. Rosen (1972) has criticized Bernstein on the ground that he has not looked closely enough at working-class life and language and that many of the key terms in his work are quite inadequately defined, for example, code, class, elaborated, and so on. Many of the arguments also appear to be circular in nature and the hypotheses weak. Labov (1972) has echoed many of these criticisms and added a few of his own. He has argued that one cannot reason from the kinds of data presented by Bernstein that there is a qualitative difference between the two kinds of speech Bernstein describes, let alone a qualitative difference that would result in cognitive and intellectual differences. For example, he says (1970, 84): 'The cognitive style of a speaker has no fixed relation to the number of unusual adjectives or conjunctions that he uses' A quantitative difference does not establish a qualitative one, particularly if the functions of language are ignored or down-played. In other words, working class speech may be different from middle class speech, but it is not inherently inferior or less well-suited to education. However, this early work raises an issue that is salient in sociolinguistic studies in schools: the relationship between home language and culture and educational practices. (See also the 2009 issue of Multilingua for a collection of papers addressing Bernstein's work, and Jones 2013 for a summary and
Sociolinguistics and Education
343
analysis of all of the arguments for and against Bernstein's theory of restricted and elaborated codes.)
Difference not deficit
Many linguists believe that language should not be an issue at all in education. They regard all varieties of a language as equal and say that what we should be doing is teaching everyone to be tolerant and accepting of other varieties (Trudgill 1995, 186-7). This is a perhaps hopelessly Utopian view. The inescapable reality is that people do use language to discriminate in every sense of that word. Milroy and Milroy (1999) state that what actually happens is that although public discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, and social class can no longer be done overtly, it appears that discrimination on linguistic grounds is perfectly acceptable, even though linguistic differences may themselves be associated with ethnic, religious, and class differences. Varieties of a language do exist, and people do use these varieties for their own purposes, not all of them to be applauded. As linguists we may deplore this fact, but we would be naive to ignore it.
Fairclough (1995) goes even further in his criticism of any kind of live-and-let-live solution. He criticizes the 'language awareness' approach advocated in various government reports in England in which students are taught Standard English but asked to recognize the legitimacy of other varieties for certain purposes. He says (1995, 225) that this is a doubtful bit of'social engineering,' that 'passing on prestigious practices and values such as those of standard English without developing a critical awareness of them ... implicitly legitimizes] them,' that it 'dress[es] up inequality as diversity' Moreover, he claims that it masks that stigmatization of certain varieties is systematic and even institutionalized, not merely the result of individual prejudices. He objects to such an approach because 'it puts linguistics ... in the position of helping to normalize and legitimize a politically partisan representation, and turns a social scientific discipline into a resource for hegemonic struggle' (1995, 250). In Fairclough's view, when linguists say that they should not take sides, they are actually taking sides, having been ideologically co-opted -though unwittingly - into the struggle about language and power in society.
The advantages of adopting styles of speech associated with the middle class and giving up those of the working class often seem to teachers to be too obvious to be questioned. They seem directly related to social mobility, which for many seems indisputably positive. Many teachers have actually gone through this process, at least to some extent, themselves. However, for many working-class children, perhaps a large majority, the advantages are not at all obvious. Many see no advantage to buying what the educational system is trying to sell because they find no value in what is being sold: only promises too often broken. As we saw earlier (chapter 7), many members of the working class, including children, find much to be gained from hanging on to their language and resisting attempts that others make to change it. They find solidarity in working-class speech. The prestige it has may be negative
344
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
and covert, but it is not without its comforts. Moreover, they may be quite aware of what it means to change: almost certain alienation from their peers without necessarily acceptance by social superiors. Attempting to 'speak posh' in Newcastle or Liverpool is almost certain to bring about your social isolation if you attend a local state school. Eckert s work (1989) with jocks and burnouts clearly shows how important identifying with the local area is for the latter group (see discussion of this in chapter 7). In London, Sebba (1993, 33) found that London Jamaican was 'a sign of ethnic identity and solidarity, and [provided] an in-group language for adolescents' All that may happen from teachers' exhortations to children to adopt a 'better' variety of language is an increase in any linguistic insecurity the children have. The consequences may therefore be quite negative for many children.
A significant study in the role of home dialect and ways of using language is found in the work of Heath (1982, 1983). She looks particularly at practices surrounding literacy in the homes of people in three different communities in the Piedmont area of the Carolinas, USA, which she gives the pseudonyms of Trackton, Roadville, and Maintown. Trackton is a Black working-class farming community, Roadville is a White working-class mill town, and Maintown represents mainstream, middle-class, school-oriented culture. The ways of interacting with books for pre-school children in Maintown are often framed as 'natural' in educational settings, when they are of course cultural. They include behavioral aspects such as being careful with books and sitting quietly while an adult reads aloud, but also ways of using language such as labeling pictures in books, answering questions about what happens in a story, and using allusions to characters and plots from books in conversations outside of story time. Drawing parallels to fiction allows children to also create stories of their own. Thus, children raised in this tradition learn to participate in literacy activities that are parallel to what they will encounter when they begin school: they listen to stories, wait for cues to respond, answer questions about what happened in the book, relate this information to events in their own lives, and perhaps come up with their own stories. All of these activities are useful for participating successfully in school.
Children in Roadville have a different experience with literacy before they begin school. They have a similar orientation to being read to in terms of behavior - they are taught to sit quietly and listen and answer factual questions about the books. However, stories they create themselves are not encouraged and in some cases are treated as lies, that is, they may be reprimanded for this kind of speech. Perhaps most importantly, while they can talk about the plot of a story, they do not have experience decontextualizing it and integrating it into their own lives. Thus while they are equipped to do early tasks surrounding reading in school, they are less prepared to do more advanced work which requires them to answer questions such as 'What would have happened if Character A had done X instead of Y in this story?' or to write creatively.
Trackton children are not systematically exposed to books and printed materials have no special place in their world. They are not socialized to sit and listen quietly while adults tell stories; storytelling is often a collaborative event, and they must
Sociolinguistics and Education
345
compete to make their contributions. They are not asked to label things in books or to answer questions about what happened in stories. They do, however, have more experience with creative storytelling. When they get to school, they are more likely to be seen as having behavioral problems, as they have not been conditioned to sit quietly and listen to stories and answer questions about the stories only when called upon. Although they are probably better equipped to deal with applications of stories to their own lives and analytical treatment of stories, these tasks are usually not asked of children in the early grades, and by the time these children reach the level where these tasks of integration and application are incorporated into instruction, the Trackton children are often already discouraged. If they have often not picked up the comprehension and composition skills required of them up until that point, they will have little opportunity to shine in creative writing.
In short, the only children who have a background that corresponds with what is done in school are the children with a Maintown upbringing. Heath advocates ethnographic research to see how community members orient to literacy in the home, and applying this knowledge to strategies for teaching children.
Exploration 13.1:   Who Should Adapt?
Is it the role of children to adapt to the school culture, or for school programs to adapt their teaching methods and curricula to make use of the resources of the children's home languages and cultures? That is, is the role of education to teach children the mainstream language and culture, or to help maintain and value the home languages and cultures? Or neither, or both? What are the practical consequences of any of these answers? Is there room for compromise?
Role of the home dialect in education
One of the issues which is basic to the design of curricula for teaching children who speak a dialect other than the prescribed standard is what role the home dialect will play in the classroom. Siegel (2007) addresses the use of Creoles and nonstandard varieties in education, pointing out multiple problems with forbidding the home language of children. These include the social, cognitive, and psychological disadvantages of being told that one s way of speaking (and being) is wrong and undesired in the school context. Such admonishments lead to children struggling with identity issues surrounding their heritage, insecurity about expressing themselves in front of the teacher and other classmates, and difficulty acquiring literacy skills. He summarizes (Siegel 2007, 67):
346
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
It would seem logical that the obstacles mentioned above could be overcome if teachers recognised Creoles and minority dialects as legitimate forms of language, if children were allowed to use their own language to express themselves until they learned the standard, and if they learned to read in a more familiar language or dialect. But a different type of logic seems to reign: the vernacular is seen as the greatest barrier to the acquisition of the standard, which is the key to academic and economic success, and therefore the vernacular must be avoided at all costs.
Siegel goes on to outline three different ways in which the home dialects of the children can be incorporated into instruction. In instrumental programs, the language is actually used for instruction, for example, the use of Tok Pisin in schools in Papua New Guinea. Accommodation programs allow for particular tasks, such as creative writing or oral expression, to be carried out in the home language, as in a reform of secondary education in Jamaica. Awareness programs include accommodation activities but also involve explicit learning about different varieties of the language and the social process through which one dialect becomes the standard. Awareness programs also include a contrastive component in which the students learn about the rule-governed natures of all dialects, and contrast the rules and patterns of their own variety with the standard. Wolfram et al.'s work in North Carolina in the United States, discussed below, has a similar orientation.
All such programs require a recognition of the legitimacy of the home dialects of the children. If the teachers and administration do not wish to legitimate the dialect, it cannot be used in the classroom. It is possible to both legitimate the dialect and teach the standard, of course, but this requires an ideological stance which allows for pluralism and acknowledges linguistic inequality.
Finally, there is a pedagogical issue. Many educators believe that immersion in the language or dialect to be used in education, that is, the standard, is the best way for children to learn that variety. However, research does not support this view; while obviously exposure to the standard variety is necessary, complete immersion (or 'submersion) has not been shown to be the most effective way to learn that standard (Craig 2001, Cummins 1988, Rickford and Rickford 2000). Moreover, denying the legitimacy of the children's home language may have a serious negative impact in terms of both social and psychological development.
African American Vernacular English and education
There has been widespread misunderstanding in the United States about AAVE, both of its characteristics and of how it is used (see discussion in chapter 2). This misunderstanding has had a number of unfortunate consequences. Many educators regarded its various distinguishing characteristics as deficiencies: AAVE was not just different from Standard English but restricted cognitive development. For example, Bereiter and Engelmann (1966, 39) stated that such children show 'a total lack of ability to use language as a device for acquiring and processing information. Language for them is unwieldy and not very useful.' In the late 1960s, this view led
Sociolinguistics and Education
347
to certain proposals to teach Black children the standard variety of the language. To remedy the deficiencies they believed to exist, Bereiter and Engelmann proposed a program designed to teach Black children how to speak: for example, how to make statements, to form negatives, to develop polar concepts ('big' and Tittle'), to use prepositions, to categorize objects, and to perform logical operations. In this view, children who spoke AAVE suffered from 'verbal deprivation or 'had no language,' and it was the duty and responsibility of educators to supply them with one. Labov and others have been severely critical of such views, believing that they completely misrepresent the linguistic abilities of Black children. These children speak a variety of English which is different from the standard favored by educators, but it is neither deficient nor unsystematic. Indeed, the variety is both systematic in itself and also related systematically to the standard. Moreover, many Black children live in a rich verbal culture in which linguistic ability is highly prized and in which many opportunities are offered for competition in verbal skill (note the above mention of this in Heath's work on language in Trackton). To assume that such children cannot affirm, negate, categorize, or think logically because they perform poorly in certain extremely inhibiting testing situations is absurd. They must use language all the time in order to get by, and any fair test of linguistic ability shows them to be as skilled as any other children. In addition, there is ample research which shows that verbal proficiency is valued in AAVE linguistic performances (see for example Mitchell-Kernan 1972, discussed in chapter 9); but such verbal skills are different from the ones that many teachers value. That such children need 'compensatory education for their lack of linguistic ability is a complete misinterpretation of the facts. They may need some help in adjusting to certain middle-class values about how language is used in education, but that is a different matter and is a problem for many non-Black children too. Such views also assume that a major function of schooling is to indoctrinate working-class children in middle-class ways, with language central to this process.
In questioning Bereiter and Engelmann's claim that Black children appear to have no language at all, 'the myth of verbal deprivation,' Labov (1972) points out that, if you put a Black child in front of an adult White interviewer who then proceeds to fire questions at that child, you may expect few responses (1972, 185): 'The child is in an asymmetrical situation where anything he says can literally be held against him. He has learned a number of devices to avoid saying anything in this situation, and he works very hard to achieve this end.' Perhaps nowhere are the inadequacies of Bereiter and Engelmann's program more clearly illustrated than in the following incident recounted by Fasold (1975, 202-3):
A film showing the corrective program developed by a team of educational psychologists for children alleged to have these language deficiencies was screened for linguists at the 1973 Linguistic Institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It contained the following sequence:
Earnest White teacher, leaning forward, holding a coffee cup: 'This-is-not-a-spoon.' Little Black girl, softly: 'Dis not no 'poon.'
White teacher, leaning farther forward, raising her voice: 'No, This-is-not-a-spoon.'
348
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
Black child, softly: 'Dis not a 'poon.'
White teacher, frustrated: "Ihis-is-not-a-spoon.'
Child, exasperated: 'Well, dass a cup!'
The reaction of the linguists, after they had finished applauding and cheering for the child, was a mixture of amusement, incredulity, and anger.
It is quite apparent from the child's final frustrated response that the problem is not language but the meaningless task the child was being asked to do.
A key issue here is the low academic achievement of African American children compared to children of other ethnic groups, often called the achievement gap. Rickford (1999a, 305) paints a bleak picture of the school performance of Black third- and fourth-graders in East Palo Alto, California, between 1989 and 1993. Green (2002,28-9) shows how, in a national study conducted as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, about two-thirds of African American fourth-graders in inner city schools were found to be reading below their grade level in the 1990s, and even in the twelfth grade the proportion exceeded two-fifths. (The corresponding rates for White students were 29 percent and 17 percent.) Even for those who regard A AVE as a genuine and inherently non-limiting variety of English, there still remains the problem of how to deal with that variety in the classroom (as discussed in the previous section). The traditional attitude that educators have toward AAVE (and other nonstandard dialects) is that AAVE does not limit its users cog-nitively but it certainly limits them socially, and one of the purposes of education is the achievement of social equality. (You do not have to be a speaker of AAVE to experience this opinion of your speech, as any Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, New Yorker, or Alabamian knows who has been told his speech sounds poor, slovenly, ugly, bad, or lazy!) But this approach has not been particularly effective. Speakers of nonstandard dialects often value their dialects highly for ingroup interactions and the construction of social identities, and understandably resent attempts to devalue their varieties. Thus, as discussed above, the issue becomes what the role of AAVE should be in the classroom, and this continues to be debated.
Two important events have addressed the issue of race, language, and classroom practices. The by-now famous Ann Arbor Decision of 1979 is an example of a successful claim that AAVE is a bona fide dialect that schools must recognize. The parents of eleven African American children attending Martin Luther King School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, sued the school board in federal court saying that their children had been denied the 'equal opportunity' to which they were entitled on account of the variety of English they spoke. The judge in the case agreed and ordered the board to take appropriate action to teach the children to read. If that action required the school system to recognize that the children did speak a different variety of the language from that used elsewhere in the school system then the school system had to adjust to the children and not the children to the school system. Although this was not quite a decision in favor of using both AAVE and Standard English, it did give both legal and public recognition to AAVE as an issue that educators could not shy away from.
Sociolinguistics and Education
349
The second decision involved Ebonics, a term particularly popular among those who believe that there are strong connections between AAVE and African languages, specifically Niger-Congo languages (see Williams 1975). On December 18, 1996, the Oakland School Board in California decided to recognize, maintain, and use Ebonics in the classroom so that Black children would eventually acquire fluency in Standard English. In effect, the board declared Ebonics to be a separate language from English, one moreover that was 'genetically based.' (Although this was often interpreted to mean that it was something innate to the race of the speaker, the word 'genetic' was actually intended to refer to language, that is, that Ebonics is descended from African languages.) This decision was supported by a unanimous vote of the Linguistic Society of America at its annual meeting on January 7, 1997, as being 'linguistically and pedagogically sound' (without that organization giving any kind of endorsement to the idea that Ebonics was indeed genetically based; see link in the online materials for this chapter to access the full document). Elsewhere it produced a very strong negative reaction (see Perry and Delpit 1998, Adger et al. 1999, Rickford 1999a, 1999b, 2004, Lakoff 2000, and Baugh 2000). For example, it led to a United States Senate sub-committee hearing in January 1997, and strong opposition from both prominent African Americans (e.g., Jesse Jackson, until he changed his mind after taking time to reconsider the issues) and White conservatives (e.g., Rush Limbaugh). The resulting furor caused the board to drop the word 'Ebonics' from its proposal in April 1997. If nonstandard varieties of English were to have a place in Oakland classrooms, they would have to enter through the back door rather than the front door. (There is now a considerable literature on Ebonics, little of which is very illuminating, for what is said does not explain why this term was selected or what actually happened in Oakland, nor does it recommend what people should do next time something similar happens. The role that linguists played in the dispute has also come in for criticism, as, for example, in Kretzschmar 2008.)
While linguists may try to offer what they regard as correctives to views associated with Bernstein and to false and misleading statements about the language abilities of many African Americans, they may not necessarily be able to provide any solutions to these problems. For example, Alim (2005) describes how difficult it is to deal with the issue of teaching Standard English to Black youths in Haven High, a high school in a small US American city in which opportunities for Blacks are constantly decreasing. Teachers have a poor knowledge of the language of Black youths and do not understand why they resist 'white cultural and linguistic norming' (2005, 195), what Alim calls attempts to 'gentrify' their language. His view is that some kind of balance must be found between the two language varieties; however, he offers no specific suggestions as to how such a balance might possibly be achieved. Perhaps that is not surprising since the problem has proved to be intractable everywhere it has been identified.
Blake and Cutler (2003) look at teacher attitudes about language in general, and AAVE particular, in New York City schools, and their findings show the importance of language ideologies in educational settings. They note (2003, 186), 'The most compelling trend in this study is that teachers' language attitudes appear to be
350
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
influenced by the philosophies, or lack thereof, of the schools in which they teach.' However, another finding of Blake and Cutler is that while teachers were often open to the idea of using what they recognized as another language in the classroom, they were far less open to the idea that using a nonstandard dialect such as AAVE would be educationally beneficial. 'Forty percent of the teachers in the survey agree that AAVE speakers have to contend with language problems associated with ESL students, with as many agreeing that it is sound to use a students' first language or dialect to teach them the standard language of the community. However, few support programs for dialect speakers or learning strategies employing AAVE as a tool' (Blake and Cutler 2003, 188). In other words, prejudice against dialects seen as deficient conflicted with ascribing a positive value of using the home language as a bridge to learning Standard English.
Applied sociolinguists
While many sociolinguists who work on dialects have been advocates for the speakers of those dialects, and have done work to illustrate the linguistic complexity and social legitimacy of nonstandard varieties, some have gone further and applied their findings to educational issues. Wolfram and his many students and associates have worked on the North Carolina Dialect Awareness Curriculum for decades and have successfully developed a state-approved dialect curriculum now used in public schools in eighth-grade social studies classes. It focuses on language attitudes and how languages are used socially and over time, with a specific focus on North Carolina dialects. (See the link to this project in the online materials for this chapter.) Wolfram advocates a social justice approach to sociolinguistics, arguing that sociolinguists should regard the applications of their work as part of their career obligation (Wolfram 2011).
Siegel (2007, 80) also expresses a similar opinion: 'rather than writing articles calling once again for more teacher training to include sociolinguistics, linguists and applied linguists need to get the message to teachers themselves - by disseminating information in non-technical terms, running workshops, attending educational conferences and meetings, and publishing articles in journals read by teachers. In other words, for linguistic knowledge to have an effect, it will have to go beyond the current boundaries of both linguistics and applied linguistics.'
Exploration 13.2:   Sociolinguists at Large
Do you agree that sociolinguists should do applied work, and if so, in what ways should they participate in language planning, policy making, or cur-ricular decisions? What are the pros and cons of this for academics and the communities in which they work?
Sociolinguistics and Education
351
Multilingual Education
Hornberger and McCay (2010, xv) note that increasingly, multilingual classrooms are the norm, not the exception, the world over, and critical perspectives on language ideologies are integral to the development of both sociolinguistics and language education. This section introduces some of the research and main ideas in this body of research.
Ideologies
A major topic in research on multilingual education is, of course, the language ideologies which inform educational programs, teacher practices, and student participation. We discussed monoglossic and normative monolingual ideologies in chapter 4; research on education in multilingual settings often looks critically at such ideologies. The issues involved here are much the same as those addressed in the last section on nonstandard dialects: the legitimation of the home languages of children, the social identities that are related to these languages, and the issue of exactly how the home language might be used in the classroom.
Wiley and Wright (2004) present a sobering review of minority student education in the United States, noting that the ideologies present are reminiscent of earlier periods in US history with a focus on restriction and social control which is based on racism and linguistic intolerance. Anti-bilingual programs and high-stakes testing (i.e., the use of standardized tests to evaluate student achievement and teacher effectiveness) have negative effects on minority language-speaking children.
Research by Wright and Bougie (2007) addresses the social and psychological advantages of programs which support ideologies of plurality and the value of minority languages spoken by the children in the classroom. They point out that children's self-esteem is higher if their home language is legitimatized in an educational setting. Their research also suggests that two-way immersion programs, in which Anglophone children learn a minority language (in their study, Spanish) and minority language-speaking children learn English, are influential in creating more positive evaluations and solidarity across ethnolinguistic group boundaries. Classroom solidarity plays a role in lessening the conceptualization of speakers of other languages, and/or members of other ethnic groups, as 'Other.' They note that the language choices of teachers are an integral part of this process: '... this research supports the specific importance of language and patterns of language use in inter-group contact settings. Consistent use of the minority languages by the teacher can positively contribute to the contact environment in multilingual classroom settings, enhancing the development of friendships and improving dominant-group members' attitudes toward the minority-language group' (Wright and Bougie 2007, 166).
Research carried out in France by Helot and Young (2006) looks at the ideologies surrounding educating minority language speakers in that country. They describe
352
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
normative monolingualism as the hegemonic ideology in France (see discussion of French language policy in chapter 14); it has led to a focus on the integration of children with an immigrant background, and not to any appreciation of linguistic diversity. Minority languages such as Breton or Arabic have been introduced into school curricula, but in ways which reflect a strong monolingual bias, for example, Arabic is offered only at the beginning level, rendering this course useless to heritage speakers of Arabic. The ideology here is that education in a minority language is useful only if you are a speaker of French, a position which feeds into the false dichotomy of immigrant versus elite bilingualism, discussed below. These authors advocate the use of language awareness programs so as to address some of the ideological problems they see in French schools.
Use of minority languages in the classroom
As in the case of nonstandard dialects, there has been a long prejudice against the use of minority languages in the classroom. One of the frequently cited reasons against the use of anything but the standard majority language is the idea that the most effective way to learn a second dialect or language is complete immersion. Research on bilingual education has not, however, supported this view. Since the early 1990s, evidence has accumulated that immersing children in the target language is not the most effective means of teaching them that language; instead, bilingual education with some instruction in the home language leads to academic success in the long term. What is often called the Ramirez Report (Ramirez et al. 1991), submitted to the US Department of Education, was the result of an eight-year longitudinal study of over 2,300 Spanish-speaking children from 554 classrooms, ranging from kindergarten to sixth-grade, in five different states. It compared different program types and found that the more years of bilingual education children had, the better they performed on English standardized tests in the sixth grade. There are several things to note about this finding. First, the positive effect of bilingual education in test scores was not always found earlier than the sixth grade; acquiring a language for academic success takes time. The long-term effectiveness of first learning to read in ones first language is definitely higher than having children learn to read in a language they are in the process of acquiring. Second, there is a superficially counter-intuitive result that children who have more schooling in Spanish do better on tests in English than children who have more exposure to English. This finding is linked to the first point, that the children who are in bilingual education programs simply have better literacy skills in the long run because they learn to read in a language they speak fluently, as opposed to a language they are learning. Thus, it is not simply exposure to English (sometimes called time on task) but the nature of exposure to English that is important.
The next large-scale study, which had similar results, was Thomas and Colliers series of publications based on a five-year study of 210,054 student records for children from kindergarten to twelfth grade across the country (Thomas and
Sociolinguistics and Education
353
Collier 1995, 1997, Collier and Thomas 2004). Again, they looked at student performance according to the type of program the children were enrolled in and also found that bilingual education programs were more effective in creating successful students in the long run. Further, they found that the more time the students spent learning in the minority language, the better they did. That is, students in programs which were 90 percent in Spanish were the highest achievers, followed by students in programs which were 50 percent in Spanish, with students in programs with fewer years of bilingual education, ESL programs, or English mainstream programs doing less well.
The most successful bilingual programs are two-way immersion programs (also called dual language programs). These programs clearly benefit the children by providing them with instruction in their dominant language and exposing them to English through Anglophone peers; such programs have social and psychological advantages which contribute to academic success. Genesee et al. (2006) also show that English language learners who participate in two-way immersion programs are less likely to drop out of school, have higher long-term academic achievement, and show more positive attitudes on the whole toward school. And for the Anglophone children in these programs, they are not only less likely to discriminate against members of other ethnolinguistic groups, but they also do well academically (Lindholm-Leary 2001). Although the majority language background part of the population in two-way immersion programs has not been studied as extensively, there exists no evidence that there is any negative impact on Anglophone students who are in bilingual programs in the United States, and they have the positive benefit of learning a second language at a young age.
However, even in bilingual education programs, there is a clear ideology about the importance of language purity. Educators frequently debate how languages should be used in multilingual contexts and, in many cases, a strict separation of languages is seen as desirable. Fitts (2006) writes about a Spanish-English dual language program in the USA, and notes some practices which serve to undermine the explicit claim that all of the children at the school are bilingual, for instance, students are categorized according to their 'first language,' which negates the possibility that they might have learned both languages in infancy. Also, it is very common for children to be expected to speak one language or the other, and not both, for instance, only Spanish during instruction in Spanish, and only English during instruction in English. This rarely reflects the reality of language use; for example, Potowski (2004) notes that only 56 percent of the utterances produced by the four students she studied were in Spanish during Spanish instruction. Fuller (2012) notes very different patterns of bilingual discourse in German-English classrooms in Germany and Spanish-English classrooms in the United States, but in neither case did the children categorically (or even mostly) stay in the language of instruction. Many other studies show that regardless of the background of the students or the amount of focus on the minority language, the majority language is used more in peer interactions (Pease-Alvarez and Winsler 1994, Heller 1999, McCarty 2002, Potowski 2004, 2007, Fuller et al. 2007, Palmer 2007).
354
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
In cases where teachers or students use bilingual discourse, another issue is how the languages are used. Patterns in which the dominant language is used for the content of the instruction and the minority language for comments which support or augment the main focus reproduce language inequalities by relegating the minority language to peripheral functions (see for instance Canagrajah 1995, Martin-Jones and Saxena 1995, 1996, Grima 2000, Martin 2003).
Many sociolinguists advocate a heteroglossic approach to education. Garcia (2009,2011) uses the term translanguaging for discussing an approach to the use of multiple ways of speaking - not just different languages but also different styles and registers - which makes use of all of the students' linguistic resources. However, this is not a widely embraced ideology in education. It requires that educators abandon what are often firmly held and widespread beliefs about the purity of language.
Another ideological issue involved in the use of bilingual discourse in the classroom may have to do with the status of the minority language itself. Even in bilingual programs, the minority language may not command a great deal of respect in comparison with the majority language. Even if the language is valued for ingroup interaction, it may be seen as less relevant for success in the wider society. Garcia (2005) discusses how the term heritage language contributes to the ideology which marginalizes minority languages: it makes the language sound like something from the past, and less relevant for contemporary life.
Elite and immigrant bilingualism
Part of the status of bilingualism and the use of two languages has to do with ideas about immigrant bilingualism and elite bilingualism. Immigrant bilingualism is usually low status; immigrant languages are associated with poor and disenfranchised segments of society. This association causes many people to associate 'bilingual' with stigmatized identities in society, they then view speaking two languages as something which is not desirable. On the other hand, elite bilingualism means speaking two languages which both carry high status. In many countries, speaking an international language such as English (discussed in more detail in the next section) in addition to the national language creates elite bilingualism.
Work by Kanno (2008) on bilingual education in Japan provides an excellent example of how this dichotomy is reproduced in education. In schools which provided bilingual education in Japanese and English (the national language and a prestigious international language, respectively), bilingualism is framed as a resource, and is used to introduce the children to high culture and global imagined communities. In other words, the children are educated with the expectation that they will be successful participants in the global economy. In contrast, the bilingualism of students who are being educated at schools which serve minority language children (i.e., immigrants or returnees, usually of lower socio-economic class) is treated as a deficit. These children are not expected to be competitive players in the global market and compared with children of privilege, immigrant and refugee students are socialized into impoverished imagined communities with more limited
Sociolinguistics and Education
355
possibilities' (Kanno 2008, 7). We see echoes of this in Vann et al (2006), where Latina/o students are positioned as future meat factory workers, and Meador (2005), in which immigrant Mexican girls are restricted from the category of'good students' because of their social class standing and native language.
The distinction between elite and immigrant bilingualism is not a linguistic difference, that is, it is not the case that elite bilinguals are more proficient in their languages than immigrant bilinguals. The perceived difference is cultural: on the one hand, it is low status to speaker a minority language natively, but on the other hand, it is high status to learn a second language (sometimes even that same low-status minority language) if you are a native speaker of the majority language. Thus the bilingualism of some speakers is denigrated, while the bilingualism of other speakers is lauded. In an article discussing the contrast of discourses in the United States about, on the one hand, learning foreign languages to better serve one's country, and on the other hand, voting for English to become the official language of the country so it would be less threatened by other languages, Lo Bianco (2004, 22) writes:
The bilingualism of immigrants and poor people is often construed as a major social problem threatening national cohesion and endangering security. Cashed-up and professionally organised public campaigns for its restriction result in the intrusion of law and sanction into classrooms, and set teachers and parents at loggerheads, ultimately leading all the way to legal prohibition. For elites, however, the name and the kind of bilingualism they are fostering is an altogether different entity. It is a skill, an esteemed cultural accomplishment, an investment in national capability, and a resource advancing national security and enhancing employment.
Such attitudes about bilingualism create a distinction between so-called elite bilingualism and immigrant bilingualism which is not about language proficiency or the particular languages involved, but about the status of the people who are associated with each category.
Exploration 13.3:   'Research Shows
Why do you think that, despite a consistent line of research which shows the benefits of bilingual education and the use of minority languages and dialects in the classroom, there is still such resistance to this? How do you feel about the idea of using a nonstandard dialect or a minority language, either one you speak or one you do not speak, in classrooms in your community? What role do you think ideologies and the emotional attachments we have to different ways of speaking play in attitudes about how children should be taught, and is it possible to change these things with knowledge of research findings?
356
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
Education and World-Wide English
In classrooms around the world, some of the same issues arise about whether minority languages should be used, and if so, how they should be incorporated into the instruction. Legitimation of home languages and cultures is balanced against the desire to empower the students by teaching them an instrumentally important majority (or international) language. In this section we will discuss how these issues emerge when learning English as a global language is part of the educational context.
Tan and Tan (2008) look at student attitudes toward Singapore English and Standard English in order to ascertain what is the best pedagogical practice given that the overall goal is for the children to learn Standard English, but they live in an environment where they are exposed to Singapore English, which differs, at times considerably, from the standard. The results from the attitudinal survey showed that the students appreciate the value of Standard English, but that they do not feel that Singapore English is 'bad English.' Use of this variety is an important part of their Singaporean identity. However, such a view of the use of Singapore English is very dependent on context and the interlocutors. Singapore English is considered 'inappropriate' from an English teacher, but less so from a Math teacher. It is the desired code for speaking to friends and family outside an educational context. It is also worth noting that the Standard English guise which was rated most highly was the one spoken with a Singaporean, not American, accent; see the discussion of glo-calization below. The authors draw parallels to the situation in the United States with Standard English and AAVE, noting that there has been some success in using AAVE in the classroom as a means to help children acquire literacy skills. They interpret the results of their survey as an indication that the use of Singapore English in the classroom might be beneficial.
Circles of English
Despite these parallels, there are some social, linguistic, and political differences between education in contexts with nonstandard dialects and minority languages and those in which English is a global, or glocal (global + local), variety with prestige as an international language. To look at these situations, we must first look at some basic concepts in the study of global Englishes.
Kachru (1986) introduced a set of terms for describing the role of English in different countries across the globe. The inner circle is described as regions in which English is used for almost all functions by the majority of the population, for example, the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia. The outer circle contains countries in which there are originally non-native but institutionalized uses of English, for example, the Philippines or South Africa. What is called the expanding circle comprises countries in which English is learned as a foreign language, and in which it plays an increasingly important role in economic
Sociolinguistics and Education
357
development. The different role of English in these societies contributes to differences in approaches to the use of English in schooling.
In the contexts of both the outer and expanding circles, the concept of glocaliza-tion is also relevant. Glocal development means that there is an interaction between global influences and local cultures, that is, there is hybridization. The norms of the target standard variety (e.g., British, American, etc.) are not simply adopted because that is what is taught in school; instead, local influences are intertwined with global ones. As Pennycook (2003) argues, globalization is not resulting in either homogenization or heterogenization of English, but is creating new aspects of popular culture, and new social categories and affiliations, which both appropriate global commodities and are locally contextualized. However, these new Englishes create another layer of complexity to multilingual situations. In the next sections we will address some of the resulting problems.
Elite closure
Language often reproduces social inequalities. One way in which this happens is that only certain people have access to languages that allow them to participate in more prestigious segments of society, in which there are often higher economic rewards. The concept of elite closure has been used to describe how people with power use language to reproduce their privileged positions; in the words of Myers-Scotton (1993, 149):
Elite closure is a type of social mobilization strategy by which those persons in power establish or maintain their powers and privileges via linguistic choices. Put more concretely, elite closure is accomplished when the elite successfully employ official language policies and their own non-formalized language usage patterns to limit access of non-elite groups to political position and socioeconomic advancement.
Myers-Scotton used this concept in her work in Africa, where colonial languages (English, French, and Portuguese) are spoken by a minority of the population and limiting participation in higher education and government to those who speak those languages is an effective gatekeeping measure. As Myers-Scotton notes, however, elite closure is essentially present everywhere to some extent, but it is more apparent and stronger in cases in which a distinct, colonial language contrasts with local languages, and a relatively small percentage of the population has mastery of the colonial language. The elite language can be any language, but in this section we will focus only on situations in which English is the elite language.
Research by Wright (2002) discusses the historical situation of the status of English in South Africa, as well as the contemporary everyday practices which reproduce the dominance of English. He concludes that there is little challenge to English in its role in economic development, but also that the local languages will continue to be spoken. That is, English will undoubtedly retain its dominance, but
358
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
not at the expense of local languages. Because of the focus on multilingualism in national language policy, it is possible that high quality English instruction could be made available to the larger population. More people knowing English well would allow continuation in the development in international trade without limiting participation in this economic activity to an elite few. Ridge (2004) notes that the varying levels of exposure to English of the different segments of the population in South Africa make this a challenge, but also advocates providing English education to a larger segment of the population so as to enable more people to participate in the global economy. In an article addressing English language policies in Africa more broadly, Kamwangamalu (2013) endorses dual-medium instruction; he argues for its educational effectiveness but also cautions that the status of the vernacular in society is a crucial key to educational success.
Most schools in Anglophone Africa use English as the medium of instruction throughout the entire educational system, while others use an indigenous language as instructional medium for the first three years of primary education and then transition to English-medium instruction. Both approaches, however, have failed to spread literacy in English or in the indigenous language, as is evident from the high illiteracy rates in the African continent. There is, therefore, the need to consider an alternative, the proposed dual-medium education consisting of an English-medium stream and a vernacular-medium stream, in each of which the opposite language, English or the vernacular, is taught as a compulsory subject. The advantage of vernacular-medium education is that the vernacular is readily accessible both within and outside of the school compound. However, for vernacular-medium education to succeed locally, particularly in the era of globalization, it must be vested with at least some of the material gains and privileges that are currently associated only with English-medium education. Otherwise, English will continue to serve, as Graddol (2006:38) describes it in his forward-looking book, as 'one of the mechanisms for structuring inequality in developing economies' (Kamwangamalu 2013, 334-5)
A contrast to the situation in multilingual Africa can be seen in largely monolingual (in terms of local languages) South Korea. English has become a critical part of education and there has been a recent debate about making English an official language of the country (Song 2011). Although no such legislation has yet been proposed, English is an undeniable focus in education. In some cases, businesses insist that applicants for white-collar jobs be able to speak English and they continue to assess the English performance of their employees, even though they may not use English as part of their professional duties. Song describes the situation as elite closure because, although English instruction is offered in all schools, in order to do well on exams and subsequently be admitted to the best universities, students must participate in after-school tutoring programs. Of course, these are accessible only to those who can afford them. As Song notes, this creates a situation in which 'the offspring of the privileged, with "good education," inherit their parents' high socio-economic positions, whereas the offspring of the lower classes, without "good education," inherit their parents' low socio-economic positions' (Song 2011,44). The
Sociolinguistics and Education
359
established social order in South Korean society is thus perpetuated through English and in the name of globalization.
Exploration 13.4:   Restricted Access
-
Are there segments of your society which can only be accessed if you master a particular code? Think about such arenas as higher education, white-collar employment, and participation in performing arts and media. Is it possible to compete in these arenas if you do not speak in a mainstream, majority-endorsed way? Also consider the opposite: are there events, activities, and opportunities exclusively for speakers of minority dialects and languages?
English in Europe
We would like to close this chapter with a discussion of the role of English in Europe, particularly within countries in the European Union. English is a lingua franca throughout Europe, just as it is elsewhere in the world. Our focus is on the growing use of English in higher education programs.
English is sometimes described as a threat to the survival of other languages in Europe, and its widespread use challenges the official EU policy on promoting linguistic diversity. It is nonetheless used increasingly in higher education programs (Coleman 2006). There is some speculation about the long-term effects of the increased use of English throughout Europe, including positing the development of a Euro English which is distinct from varieties spoken in inner circle countries, (e.g., Jenkins et al. 2001, Mollin 2006) or, at the very least, the emergence of local, communicatively focused uses of English which contrast with a prescriptive focus on norms from the inner circle. House (2003) discusses how English as a lingua franca is spoken by multilinguals and should be embraced as a hybrid variety which may include a variety of underlying worldviews; similar arguments are made by Seidlhofer et al. (2006) and Graddol (2006). In this perspective, native speakers of English from English-speaking countries no longer establish the norms for English in Europe.
In some cases, the spread of English is equated with the spread of capitalism and consumerism. Phillipson (2008) objects to the use of the term 'lingua franca' in this case. He argues that this term evokes a sense of egalitarianism that is not present in a situation in which some are native speakers and others are not, and the language is not neutral but clearly linked to specific cultural traditions and influences. He cautions against the adoption of English as the language of higher education as a response to market forces, and advocates careful policy and planning to prevent it displacing other languages. He notes: 'English as a lingua academica must be in
360
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
balance with strong local language ecologies, which presupposes strong national language policies. The education system must evolve strategies for students and staff to become effectively trilingual (at least) in a diverse range of languages' (Phillipson 2006, 27).
Bolton and Kuteeva (2012) present a less oppositional view of English in higher education in Sweden in a study in which they surveyed students and academic staff at a Swedish university. The rhetoric of English as a threat is certainly present in the society as a whole and was voiced by the participants in their research, but was not the dominant perspective. One finding was that the use of English parallel to Swedish was a pragmatic reality for those in the natural sciences, and greater use was also reported in the social sciences, with less use found in the study of the humanities and law. There was, on the whole, support among the students for the use of English in instruction, which often occurred in the form of parallel use with Swedish, that is, Swedish was employed to clarify or when students worked together in group work, but English was the medium of lectures. Although 30-40 percent of the students (depending on their area of study) responded that they felt English was a threat to Swedish in terms of the domains of use, very few respondents (ranging from 10 percent in natural sciences to 17 percent in law) felt that the use of English in their education was a disadvantage for them personally, or for the university as a whole.
The example of Europe illustrates that English is not only seen as a threat to other languages in post-colonial contexts or in situations in which it is the dominant language spoken in a community. Its use in education is seen as both necessary for participation in global markets and as a means of creating social inequalities. Once again we see how languages and their uses are inextricably bound.
Chapter Summary
This chapter looks at how linguistic inequality is embedded in education in three different contexts: in cases where students speak nonstandard dialects; in communities where minority languages are spoken; and in countries where English is not a community language but is the medium of education. In all of these contexts, social inequalities are perpetuated by ideologies which privilege certain ways of speaking, and social structures which impede access to high-status codes for some portions of the population.
Exercises
1. Interview a teacher or administrator at a local school and write a short description of the ideologies about and practices in education you discover. Although you may want to add topics to this interview protocol, here is a list of topics to begin with:
Sociolinguistics and Education
361
• What language varieties are spoken by the children in the school? Is there a clear majority who speak one language, or are there many different codes which are well represented?
• In their free time before and between classes and on the playground, what languages can be heard spoken among the pupils?
• What language(s) are used in instruction? Are they the medium of instruction, the subject of instruction, or both? Are there different programs or classrooms that have different languages (for instance, a few classrooms which offer bilingual instruction, or foreign language classrooms)?
• Is the variety of language used in instruction a contested issue for students, parents, teachers, or administrators? Is this school typical of others in the region? If not, how is it different?
• Do you have suggestions for anything you would change about the language(s) used in instruction at your school?
• Do you feel that most of the children at your school are successful, that is, are prepared to go on to higher levels of education or employment? If so, what do you think is the root of this success? If not, what would need to change to better prepare the students?
2. Write an essay discussing a language awareness curriculum for schools in your region. Include a description of the regional dialects or minority languages which are spoken in the area, and how they are viewed by speakers of the majority language. What exactly would you want to address in a language awareness program? Outline the main points you would like teachers to understand about language variation, language ideologies, and language and social identity. Make some suggestions for what you would like children to do in a unit on language in their region if this was incorporated into the school curriculum. Conclude with a discussion of the potential benefits of such instruction.
Further Reading
Adamson, H. D. (2005). Language Minority Students in American Schools: An Education in English. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
This book introduces the reader to theory in second language acquisition, language policy, and language in society, and then applies this material to the topic of English language learners in the United States. Analysis chapters include a thorough review of bilingual education and nonstandard dialect use in schools. Cenoz, Jasone and Ulrike Jessner (eds.) (2000). English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language, vol. 19. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
This volume examines the sociolinguistics, psycholinguistic, and educational aspects of English in Europe. It looks at third language acquisition and how it contrasts with second language acquisition, and presents case studies from regions where most students already speak two varieties when they begin with instruction in English (e.g., Catalonia, Basque Country, Friesland).
362
Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
Fuller, Janet M. (2009). Multilingualism in Educational Contexts: Ideologies and Identities. Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1): 338-58.
After a brief discussion of the patterns of multilingual language use that have been noted in research in classrooms, this article summarizes research on language ideologies and social identities in a variety of multilingual education contexts, including but not limited to bilingual education programs. Helot, Christine and Anne-Marie De Mejia (eds.) (2008). Forging Multilingual Spaces: Integrated Perspectives on Majority and Minority Bilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
This volume presents case studies from the Americas and Europe looking at the ideologies present in education and the challenges of incorporating multilingualism into the classroom.
Trudell, Barbara (2010). When 'Prof Speaks, Who Listens? The African Elite and the Use of African Languages for Education and Development in African Communities. Language and Education 24(4): 337-52.
This article examines the role of elite members of African societies in terms of language choices in education, framing these choices in terms of sociopolitical factors which influence curricula.
Wigglesworth, G., R. Billington, and D. Loakes (2013). Creole Speakers and Standard Language Education. Language and Linguistics Compass 7: 388-97. doi: 10.Illl/lnc3.12035 This article examines attitudes to Creole languages and how these influence their use in educational contexts, and summarizes research on different approaches to the education of speakers of Creole languages.
For further resources for this chapter visit the companion website at www.wiley.com/go/wardhaugh/sociolinguistics
References
Adger, C. T., D. Christian, and O. Taylor (eds.) (1999). Making the Connection: Language and Academic Achievement among African American Students. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Alim, H. S. (2005). Hearing What's Not Said and Missing What Is: Black Language in White Public Space. In S. F. Kiesling and C. B. Paulston (eds.), Intercultural Discourse and Communication. Oxford: Blackwell.
Baugh, J. (2000). Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bereiter, C. and S. Engelmann (1966). Teaching Disadvantaged Children in the Preschool.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bernstein, B. (1961). Social Structure, Language and Learning. Educational Research 3:
163-76.
Bernstein, B. (1971-5). Class, Codes and Control, vols 1-3. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bernstein, B. (1972). Social Class, Language and Socialization. In P. P. Giglioli (ed.), Language and Social Context: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.
Sociolinguistics and Education
363
Bernstein, B. (1990). The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse, vol. 4: Class, Codes and Control. London: Routledge.
Blake, Rene and Cecilia Cutler (2003). AAE and Variation in Teachers' Attitudes: A Question
of School Philosophy? Linguistics and Education 14(2): 163-94. Bolton, Kingsley and Maria Kuteeva (2012). English as an Academic Language at a Swedish
University: Parallel Language Use and the "Threat" of English.' Journal of Multilingual
and Multicultural Development 33(5): 429-47. Bonnin, Juan Eduardo (2013). New Dimensions of Linguistic Inequality: An Overview.
Language and Linguistics Compass 7(9): 500-509. Canagrajah, A. Suresh (1995). Functions of Codeswitching in ESL Classrooms: Socializing
Bilingualism in Jaffna. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 16:
173-95.
Coleman, James A. (2006). English-Medium Teaching in European Higher Education. Language Teaching 39(1): 1-14.
Collier, Virginia P. and Wayne P. Thomas (2004). The Astounding Effectiveness of Dual Language Education for All. NABE Journal of Research and Practice 2(1): 1-20.
Craig, D. R. (2001). Language Education Revisited in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In P. Christie (ed.), Due Respect. Papers on English and English-Related Creoles in the Caribbean in Honour of Professor Robert Le Page. Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 61-76.
Cummins, J. (1988). Second Language Acquisition within Bilingual Education Programs. In L. M. Beebe (ed.), Issues in Second Language Acquisition: Multiple Perspectives. New York: Newbury House, 145-66.
Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identities in the High School. New York: Teachers College Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.
Fasold, R. W (1975). Review of J. L. Dillard, Black English. Language in Society 4: 198-221.
Fitts, Shanan (2006). Reconstructing the Status Quo: Linguistic Interaction in a Dual-Language School. Bilingual Research Journal 29: 337-65.
Fuller, Janet M. (2012). Bilingual Pre-Teens: Competing Ideologies and Multiple Identities in the U.S. and Germany. New York: Routledge.
Fuller, Janet, Minta Elsman, and Kevan Self (2007). Addressing Peers in a Spanish-English Bilingual Classroom. In Kim Potowski and Richard Cameron (eds.), Spanish in Contact: Educational, Social, and Linguistic Inquiries. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 135-51.
Garcia, Ofelia (2005). Positioning Heritage Languages in the United States. The Modern Language Journal 89(4): 601-605.
Garcia, Ofelia (2009). Education, Multlingualism and Translanguaging in the 21st Century. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas, R. Phillipson, A. K. Mohanty and M. Panda (eds.), Social Justice through Multilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 140-58.
Garcia, Ofelia (2011). From Language Garden to Sustainable Languaging: Bilingual Education in a Global World. NABE Perspectives 34(1): 5-9.
Genesee, F. (ed.) (2006). Educating English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Graddol, D. (2006). English Next: Why Global English May Mean the End of English as a Foreign Language.' London: The British Council, http://www.britishcouncil.org/ learning-research-english-next.pdf (accessed July 3, 2014).
Green, L. J. (2002). African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
364 Sociolinguistics and Social Justice
Grima, Antoinette Camilleri (2000). The Maltese Bilingual Classroom: A Microcosm of
Local Society. Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies 6: 3-12. Heath, Shirley Brice (1982). What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and
School. Language in Society 11(1): 49-76. Heath, Shirley Brice (1983). Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and
Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heller, Monica (1999). Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography.
New York: Longman.
Helot, Christine and Andrea Young (2006). Imagining Multilingual Education in France: A Language and Cultural Awareness Project at Primary Level. In Ofelia Garcia, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Maria E. Torres-Guzman (eds.), Imagining Multilingual Schools: Languages in Education and Glocalization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 69-90.
Hornberger, Nancy H. (2011). Dell H. Hymes: His Scholarship and Legacy in Anthropology
and Education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 42(4): 310-18. Hornberger, Nancy and Sandra Lee McCay (2010). Sociolinguistics and Language Education.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. House, Julianne (2003). English as a Lingua Franca: A Threat to Multilingualism? Journal of
Sociolinguistics 7(4): 556-78. Hymes, D. (1969). Reinventing Anthropology. New York: Random House. Jenkins, Jennifer, Marko Modiano, and Barbara Seidlhofer (2001). Euro-English. English
Today 17(4): 13-19.
Jones, Peter E. (2013). Bernstein's 'Codes' and the Linguistics of 'Deficit' Language and Education 27(2): 161-79.
Kachru, Braj B. (1986). The Power and Politics of English. World Englishes 5(2-3): 121-40.
Kanno, Yasuko (2008). Language and Education in Japan: Unequal Access to Bilingualism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kamwangamalu, Nkonko M. (2013). Effects of Policy on English-Medium Instruction in Africa. World Englishes 32(3): 325-37.
Kretzschmar, W. A., Jr (2008). Public and Academic Understanding about Language: The Intellectual History of Ebonics. English World-Wide 29(1): 70-95.
Labov, W. (1970). The Study of Language in its Social Context. Studium Generale 23: 30-87. In P. P. Giglioli (ed.) (1972), Language and Social Context: Selected Readings. Harmonds-worth, England: Penguin Books.
Labov, W. (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
LakofF, R. T. (2000). The Language War. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lindholm-Leary, Kathryn (2001). Dual Language Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Lo Bianco, J. (2004). Uncle Sam and Mr. Unz. English Today 20(3): 16-22.
Martin, Dierdre (2003). Constructing Discursive Practices in School and Community: Bilingualism, Gender and Power. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 6: 237-52.
Martin-Jones, Marilyn and Mukul Saxena (1995). Supporting or Containing Bilingualism? Policies, Power Asymmetries, and Pedagogic Practices in Mainstream Primary Classrooms. In James W. Tollefson (ed.), Power and Inequality in Language Education. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 73-90.
Martin-Jones, Marilyn and Mukul Saxena (1996). Turn-Taking, Power Asymmetries, and the Positioning of Bilingual Participants in Classroom Discourse. Linguistics and Education 8: 105-23.
Sociolinguistics and Education
365
McCarty, Theresa L. (2002). A Place to Be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling. Nahwah, NT: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Meador, Elizabeth (2005). The Making of Marginality: Schooling for Mexican Immigrant Girls in the Rural Southwest. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 36: 149-64.
Milroy, J. and L. Milroy (1999). Authority in Language. 3rd edn. London: Routledge.
Mitchell-Kernan, Claudia (1972). Signifying and Marking: Two Afro-American Speech Acts. In John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics. The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 161-69.
Mollin, Sandra (2006). Euro-English: Assessing Variety Status, vol. 33. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Myers-Scotton, Carol (1993). Elite Closure as a Powerful Language Strategy: The African Case. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 103(1): 149-64.
Palmer, Deborah (2007). A Dual Immersion Strand Program in California: Carrying out the Promise of Dual Language Education in an English-Dominant Context. The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10(6): 752-68.
Pease-Alvarez, Lucinda and Adam Winsler (1994). Cuando el Maestro no Habla Espanol: Children's Bilingual Language Practices in the Classroom. TESOL Quarterly 28: 507-35.
Pennycook, Alastair (2003). Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and Performativity. Journal of
Sociolinguistics 7(4): 513-33. Perry, T. and L. Delpit (eds.) (1998). The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the
Education of African-American Children. Boston: Beacon Press. Phillipson, Robert (2006). English, a Cuckoo in the European Higher Education Nest of
Languages? European Journal of English Studies 10(1): 13-32. Phillipson, Robert (2008). Lingua Franca or Lingua Frankensteinia? English in European
Integration and Globalisation. World Englishes 27(2): 250-67. Potowski, Kim (2004). Student Spanish Use and Investment in a Dual Language Classroom:
Implications for Second Language Acquisition and Heritage Language Maintenance.
The Modern Language Journal 88: 75-100. Potowski, Kim (2007). Language and Identity in a Dual Immersion School. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Ramirez, J. D., S. D. Yuen, and D. R. Ramey (1991). Final Report: Longitudinal Study of Structured English Immersion Strategy, Early-Exit and Late-Exit Programs for Language-Minority Children. Report submitted to the US Department of Education. San Mateo, CA: Aguirre International.
Rickford, J. R. (1999a). African American Vernacular English. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rickford, J. R. (1999b). The Ebonics Controversy in My Backyard: A Sociolinguists Experience and Reflections. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(2): 267-75.
Rickford, J. R. (2004). Spoken Soul: The Beloved, Belittled Language of Black America. In C. Fought (ed.), Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rickford, J. R. and R. J. Rickford (2000). Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. New York:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Ridge, Stanley G. M. (2004). Language Planning in a Rapidly Changing Multilingual Society:
The Case of English in South Africa. Language Problems & Language Planning 28(2):
199-215.
Rosen, H. (1972). Language and Class: A Critical Look at the Theories of Basil Bernstein.
Bristol: Falling Wall Press. Sebba, M. (1993). London Jamaican: Language Systems in Interaction. London: Longman.