The “grammar school pressure”: From tolerance to distance, to rejection of ‘Scouse’ in middle-class Merseyside schools

Abstract

This paper explores the use and position of Scouse in middle-class secondary schools. Despite a wide circulation of a ‘variation ideology’ (Cameron, 1995) that embraces and positively values regional speech in the UK, we discuss the hierarchical relationship between Scouse and standard English that is naturalised in the specific school settings. We focus on classroom talk and interviews from teachers and students in two all-girls grammar schools. We observe that student language use in the classroom, the social values indexed by Scouse and the stances towards Scouse in metapragmatic talk range from tolerance, to distance, to complete rejection of the local variety in the specific setting. We discuss how middle-class school settings can enforce and sustain homogenising language ideologies and address the power implications this practice has on non-confident speakers of standard English in relation to the wider issue of educational failure.