Abstract
ABSTRACT This article presents an analysis of the standard language ideology within a corpus of school-designed language policy documents from 264 primary schools in England. It examines the processes by which standard language ideological concepts (e.g. ‘Standard English’, ‘correctness’, ‘hegemony’) get textually manifested in school policies, and how these are intertextually and interdiscursively shaped by the broader educational policy context that teachers work in, notably the large-scale curriculum and assessment reforms of National Curriculum 2014. Using tools and methods from critical language policy, I reveal how new meanings emerge in the machinery of the policy-making process and at the contact points between policy levels. I trace how the standard language ideology within government policies gets reconstructed in school policies, with an emphasis on linguistic ‘correctness’ and the near-exclusive requirement for students and teachers to use standardised English in speech and writing. I discuss policies of surveillance, whereby teachers are discursively constructed and positioned as standard language ‘role models’: as powerful and authoritative figures who are granted a license to police, regulate and suppress their students’ language, whilst also having their own language controlled and monitored. Finally, I argue for the place of critical language awareness within the policy-making process at school level.
Highlights
Model accurate talk by addressing grammatical errors [...]
This article presents an analysis of the standard language ideology within a corpus of school-designed language policy documents from 264 primary schools in England
Within the primary school component of National Curriculum 2014 (NC2014), one major change to curricula and assessment policies was concerned with language, with an explicitemphasis placed on students and teachers to use standardised English in their speech and writing
Summary
Model accurate talk by addressing grammatical errors [...]. Model competent speech and show them the difference between clarity and slang. Within the primary school component of NC2014, one major change to curricula and assessment policies was concerned with language, with an explicit (re)emphasis placed on students and teachers to use standardised English in their speech and writing This was one attempt by the Conservative government to instil ‘back to basics’ grammar work in schools reminiscent of the 1950s, under the guise that children had become ‘ignorant’ of ‘proper grammar’ under the previous Labour government (Gove, 2010), and that explicit language knowledge could be tested in terms of ‘right or wrong answers’ (DfE, 2011). These traces, especially those concerned with the standard language ideology, are the key foci of this article
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