‘Addressing’ language deficit: valuing children's variational repertories

Abstract

There is growing evidence that student contributions via classroom talk (oracy) are subject to social judgements premised on cultural evaluation of accent and dialect, with particular varieties often viewed in deficit terms and pathologised, both within and beyond the classroom. We reflect on a university–community project involving researchers working to support Greythorpe Junior School (‘pseudonymised’) to address the linguistic deficit position that a school inspection report had taken in relation to the use of local varieties of English in Greythorpe. The researchers used socio‐linguistic frames (repertoire, accommodation and discourse attuning) to develop productive strategies for students and the school to take ownership of how to negotiate perspectives that diminish non‐standard accents and dialects. We provide illustrations of the workshop conversations with children and teachers to highlight the sophisticated, lived, metalinguistic understandings of children and teachers in the school, through which this perception of language deficit was ultimately renegotiated. In illustrating this case, we draw into focus the ways in which academic, institutional, socio‐linguistic knowledge is (by its descriptive nature) divorced from context and so is only of use if it can be owned by those who are facing linguistic inequalities.

Transfer of Cultural Codes in Intercultural Communication

“…According to Andrew Simpson, language variation and change is related to social structures and the expression of group and personal identities (Simpson, 2019). David Hyatt believes that language variation is associated with different ways of "being" (Hyatt, 2022). In this case, there are two options for code holders (a person, a society of this culture).…”

Oracy and cultural capital: the transformative potential of spoken language

“…However, such critiques do not substantially affect the daily realities of schools. They are obliged, nevertheless, to navigate the terrain between valuing local dialects and satisfying both school inspection and societal expectations privileging so-called Standard English (Hyatt et al, 2022). The main focus of this article is on a closely-related issue: the way that the term 'cultural capital' is used as a call-to-arms in this social mobility quest (e.g.…”

Lexical and cognitive development of children learning regional languages: Studies from the Netherlands

“…Students who speak certain linguistic varieties, such as regional languages, are both within and outside the classroom subject to social judgments and deficit thinking (Hyatt et al, 2022). This deficit perspective and attribution of failure and disability to speakers of regional varieties is, for example, reflected in the letter of a special needs teacher working at an elementary school in Limburg, a province in the south of the Netherlands, who writes: "I am confronted on a daily basis with children who have learned a dialect as their first language.…”