Prevalent Attitudes and School Policy toward Non-standard Dialects

Abstract

We, as teachers, usually find it difficult to accept the oral language patterns that some of our pupils bring to school. “We are prone to inject an element of morality into our pseudo-standard of English.” (Cheney 1976, p.58).As Hall (1959) so ably comments, “Our native speech is inextricably bound to our perception of friends, community, religion, nation and other peoples.”Basically, non-standard dialects are viewed either as a deficit form of standard English or a different but equal language system. These are basically the two main models. Wolfram (1973, p.68) says that, in the deficit model, speech differences are viewed and described with reference to a norm and deviation from that norm. The control group norm is, of course, middle-class speech or standard English. Nonconformity to this norm is seen as an indication of retarded language acquisition or under-developed language. Nonstandard dialects are considered as the pathology of non-organic speech deficiencies, and the patterns of these dialects are labelled with such terms as ‘misarticuiations’; ‘deviations’; ‘replacements’; ‘faulty pronunciations’ and the like.The ‘difference’ model sees non-standard dialects as self-contained systems in their own rights. They have their own phonological and grammatical rules and are equally legitimate both socially and psychologically, as well as being syntactically functionally equivalent to standard English.