Those Terrible Marks of the Beast: Non-standard Dialect and Children's Writing

Abstract

The greater emphasis on standard English in the 1995 version of English in the National Curriculum in England has meant that it has become more important than ever to understand the relationship between non-standard dialects and standard English. This study (funded by an ESRC grant) examines a range of writing tasks from 11 and 15 year old pupils from four regions of England to establish the relative importance of nonstandard dialect as a factor in deviation from standard English norms in writing. The findings were related to those of Hudson & Holmes (1995) on the influence of nonstandard dialect on spoken language. It was found that the use of non-standard dialect was a relatively rare phenomenon and one which shrinks into insignificance when compared with, for example, errors of spelling or punctuation. While gender and regional origin seemed to have little influence on the frequency of non-standard dialect, the task in hand did seem to have an effect, particularly with the younger pupils.