Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

The Persistence of Linguistic Deficit 131speakers of nonstandard English thus fall into a ‘language trap’; they needhelp in standard language in order to advance socially and economically,but the modern linguistic paradigm insists that schools should encouragethe use of varieties of nonstandard English. The pivotal point, however(according to Honey) is that all dialects are not equally valid: there issomething to the ‘deficit’ idea after all.He argues, for example, that some varieties are superior to others inthat they can express more rarefied concepts (he mentions highermathematics, biochemistry and the philosophy of Wittgenstein). He is,of course, confusing words with concepts. Vocabulary is, in itself, only anindicator of relevant social ideas, beliefs, theories and so on: societiesignorant of higher mathematics will obviously not need terms to describeit. It is important to realize here that, as societies develop and change, sotheir languages alter. All dialects and languages are capable of expressingwhatever the social environment demands; see also Crowley (1989),who enlarges his discussion of Honey by referring to other ‘ideologists ofthe new right’.Honey sees the scholarly acceptance of the different-but-not-deficientviewpoint as a reflection of Chomskyan influence, and of the contemporaryfashion to avoid making moral judgments of societies and theirlanguages. Chomsky is seen to bolster the difference argument byholding that all human beings share similar underlying linguisticcapacities, that all languages are essentially similar at some deep level.Consequently, qualitative judgments are inappropriate across languages.I suppose this is true, but even if Chomskyan (and other, more recent)‘innatist’ theories were completely transcended, the argument that allvarieties are adequate for their users would still not necessarily beweakened because one would have to claim that different groups ofhuman beings differ markedly in their innate conceptual powers, a claimthat has never been substantiated. In general, questions of variations insocial development possibly of inequalities in cognitive capacities, andcertainly of marked differences in the operation of such capacities inparticular environments are large and vexed. I would simply arguethat, whatever the verdict may be in terms of cognitive developmentin other areas, that of adequate language is a human universal (see alsoEdwards, 1985).On the second point, it is true that cultural relativism has been apowerful influence in contemporary literature, and it is the case, asHoney implies, that this can lead to difficulties: an extreme relativismmight seem to force us to embrace such repellent practices as Nazi warcrimes, cannibalism and female circumcision. My argument, however, is