Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Language and Ideologies 19
oriented work, as shown in three recent studies, two conducted in the
United States and one in South Africa. It is no accident that these studies all
deal with secondary education, the level at which control of standard forms
in written language assumes ever-greater importance as an educational
gatekeeper. All these studies revolve around identifi cation of putative
errors, but the analysts show that, in fact, concepts of what counts as ‘error’
in any setting are not given, but rather a product of local sociolinguistic
realities and student and teacher aspirations, which, in many school systems,
require high levels of mastery of the academically acceptable code.
The contrasts between pressures affecting the choice of language varieties,
specifi cally the contrasts between African-American vernacular versus
standard English, serve as the focus for one recent study that examined
interactions observed during ‘Daily Language Practice’ (in some US school
districts, it is also often called ‘Daily Oral Language’, a misnomer, for it
consists of efforts to engage students in daily practice of the rules of prescriptive
grammar through correction of errors in single sentences that
students see on the blackboard) in 10th grade English classes that served
mainly African-American pupils in an urban US school district (Godley
et al., 2007). Observational evidence indicated that all students spoke both
standard and African-American English (a not uncommon situation; see
Baugh (2004) and Rickford (1999) on the degree of bidialectalism across
African-American users of English and also Rampton (2009) on the ability
of British adolescents to shift across local dialects of English for stylistic
purposes). In these classes, the daily language practice activity was used
as a class opener, intended to take about 10 minutes. It had been adopted,
in part, because of concern about student performance on the federallymandated
standardized tests involving both multiple choice exams and
free writing. The investigators (who included the teacher) audio- and
videotaped these activities regularly over the course of a school year, and
later selected episodes for analysis. Using inductive methods characteristic
of the ethnography of communication, they studied transcripts and
viewed and reviewed tapes to identify recurring themes.
The themes were collaboratively coded (a high-inference procedure)
for the source and content of language ideologies. Sources of language
ideologies included external requirements (state and district standards,
the mandated standardized tests), curriculum materials, the activity structure,
and teacher and student talk observed during its unfolding, all infl uences
that shape most classrooms. Regarding content, fi ndings showed a
predominance of unifying, monolithic beliefs about a single, correct,
authoritative standard form for written English (a perennially powerful
ideology in education; Siegel, 2006); a disconnect between form and function;
a belief that there was one ‘proper’ dialect, while others were ‘slang’;
and the pervasive equation of grammar instruction with editing. At
the same time, other themes less frequently articulated but still present