The policy and policing of language in schools

Abstract

This study investigates cases of language ‘policing’ as educational language policies, and the way that these are represented across different policy levels. Focusing on UK schools and using discursive approaches to language policy as a theoretical framework, I critically examine the motivations and justifications that institutions provide for designing and implementing policies whereby nonstandardised forms are ‘banned’, and how these are reported in metalinguistic discourse. Drawing on a range of data including media discourse, policy documents, teacher interviews and linguistic landscapes, I textually trace how educational language policies (re)produce prescriptive and linguicist ideologies, often using metaphors of crime, and often using language as a proxy for social factors such as academic achievement, employability, and standards. Overall, I argue that micro- and meso-level language policies are a partial product of the linguistic conservatism as found within current macro-level educational policy. (Language policy, language policing, schools, language ideologies)*

‘Say it like the Queen’: the standard language ideology and language policy making in English primary schools

“…Institutions such as schools can reproduce these ideologies in their daily activities (e.g. Godley et al, 2007), with language policies often propagating the arbitrary requirement for students and teachers to speak and write in the standardised variety, which can legitimise instances of language policing, punishment and surveillance (see Cushing, 2020a).…”

“…Irvine & Gal, 2000) through the process of enregisterment, whereby a linguistic repertoire becomes explicitly linked with social values and personality traits (Johnstone, 2016). The use of 'error posters' that S102 refers to above has been critiqued by others, including Cushing (2020aCushing ( , 2020b, where these material aspects of policy and language surveillance serve as a permanently visible reminder of classroom language laws and the 'undesirable' status of non-standardised English. Other policies in the corpus referred to these kinds of symbols, to 'reinforce what is counted as correct grammar' (S67), with further use of the policing metaphor in the use of 'word jails' (S203) in which 'slang' and other undesirable forms are incarcerated in.…”

“…This article builds on work which is challenging language ideologies within current education policy in England (see Cushing, 2020a;Grainger, 2013;Snell, 2013). It expands on this by examining a large dataset and employing a range of tools from critical language policy, drawing attention to the importance of intertextuality and how new meanings emerge at the contact points between policy histories, layers and levels in order to interrogate policies of surveillance and compliance.…”

“…Whilst school policies featuring strict 'standard English only' and 'slang bans' have been previously criticised (e.g. Cushing, 2020a;Snell, 2013), this work has focused on individual schools rather than a network of ideologies across policy levels and processes. The current article contributes to existing research by exploring patterns across a large dataset of meso-level policies, to capture how macro-level policies are interpreted and adapted by policy actors in schools.…”

Comment on ‘The policy and policing of language in schools’ by Ian Cushing

“…Ian Cushing raises important issues, both specific and general, in his provocative article (Cushing 2019), so I am grateful to the editors for allowing me to offer a comment 1 . The main issue in his article is the role of language policy in language planning (and especially in language education); and in particular, who is responsible for prescriptivist bias against nonstandard varieties?…”