Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

94 Language Diversity in the Classroomprovided the most interesting sub-plot within the larger story ofdisadvantage. Evaluations of language were at once the main pillar ofthe deprivation position and, at the same time, the arena in which the‘difference’ attack on that position was (and is) the most thoroughgoingand the most successful. So, even though the preceding discussions meanthat the outcome here can be anticipated before we start, the illustrativevalue is very great.As in the previous chapters, much of my purpose here is to presentsomething of the background to current positions. For that reason, I havecited many studies from the 1960s and 1970s, the times when matters stillextremely relevant in the ‘real world’ in the contemporary classroom,to name one important arena were being thrashed out in the literature.Of particular importance in all this is the realization that, although the‘difference’ point of view may have won the day in intellectual terms,‘deficit’ views of one sort or another remain dominant beyond the grovesof academe. For two recent overviews, see Ng (2007) and Wright andBougie (2007).The educational stage has always been the most important here, andso we might begin this chapter by introducing two of the star players,characters whose continuingly appealing roles have contributed to a playwith a run far longer than that of The Mousetrap. InSpeed the Plough, firstperformed at Covent Garden in 1800, Thomas Morton introduced thefamous Mrs Grundy. Like Mrs Harris, Sairey Gamp’s invisible friend inMartin Chuzzlewit, Mrs Grundy never actually appears herself. She isrespectfully invoked by Farmer Ashfield’s wife, however, as the epitomeof polite acceptability, and her name has since become synonymous withnarrow puritanism, ‘morality’ and linguistic purism of the mostconventional sort. Dame Ashfield’s concerns in matters of propriety ‘What will Mrs Grundy say? What will Mrs Grundy think?’ haveevolved into apprehensions with which those readers who rememberschool grammar classes will no doubt be familiar. They may be lessfamiliar with Miss Fidditch, one of those schoolteachers who wouldrather ‘parse than eat’. In Martin Joos’s (1967) famous little book on style,The Five Clocks, Miss Fidditch plays a central role, considering herself asthe prophet of the great god, Webster. Mrs Grundy and Miss Fidditchhave had many relatives in school systems around the world, and theirinfluence continues. 1Trudgill (1979: 21) reproduced some press reaction to his book onlanguage variation at school (Trudgill, 1975). The general feeling was thatany defence of nonstandard varieties was a blow against ‘good’ grammarand a support for ‘incomplete and lazy’ language. A writer in The