Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

The Language Debate 105of middle-class mother/child interactions. The authors summarize theirfindings as follows:The meaning of deprivation would thus seem to be a deprivation ofmeaning in the early cognitive relationships between mother andchild. This environment produces a child who relates to authorityrather than to rationale, who may often be compliant but is notreflective in his behavior, and for whom the consequences of an actare largely considered in terms of immediate punishment or rewardrather than future effects and long-range goals. (Hess & Shipman,1968b: 103)The clever but vacuous phrase that begins the quotation soonrecommended itself to many ‘deficit’ researchers. Indeed, the generalimport of the statement as a whole links perfectly with the broaderenvironmental-deficit perspective already discussed. Hess and Shipmango on to argue that, since the early life of the lower-class child is mentallystunting, intervention aimed at nothing less than ‘resocialization’ isindicated.The criticisms that can be made of this sort of work are by nowfamiliar. It is always difficult to generalize from psychological probingsof one sort or another especially with social groups for whom they arestrange and artificial occurrences to what actually takes place in thehome. Assumptions about links between different types of maternalbehavior and children’s cognitive development are difficult to confirm.Powerful assumptions of the ‘normality’ and ‘correctness’ of middleclassattitudes and lifestyles may infect even the most sensitiveassessments of lower-class environments. And so on.Somewhat more sophisticated work on class differences in the‘language of maternal control’ was presented by Cook-Gumperz (1973).On the basis of tape-recorded interviews, working-class mothers wereobserved to employ ‘imperative’ modes of control, while the middle classutilized a broader and more personal mode. Nevertheless, considerableintra-class variation was also found. Related to the broad tendencies ofclass differences in control techniques was the use of elaborated code inthe middle-class mothers’ speech, and restricted code in that of theirworking-class counterparts. Similar work was reported by Robinson andRackstraw (1972): in response to various questions, middle-class childrenwere found to give more information, and to explain and amplify upontheir answers more fully, than did working-class children; the answers ofthe latter often involved simple appeals to authority or custom.