Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

The Persistence of Linguistic Deficit 137It seems that Honey is at pains to bring up his thesis, and its numerouscritics, wherever possible. For example, in an extremely lengthy reviewof Mugglestone’s (1995) interesting book on ‘talking proper’, Honey(2000b) finds the central argument about the relationship between speechand status undercut by the author’s uncritical acceptance of the‘linguistic equality hypothesis’. Honey’s point here seems to be anattempted dissociation of ‘educatedness’ and social éliteness. Hecriticizes Mugglestone’s ‘false correlation of accents with the social eliteas such, rather than with people who were perceived as educated’. Heacknowledges that ‘to be a gentleman was one of the frequentaccompaniments of educatedness’, but rejects the notion that it was a‘defining characteristic’. (Crowley, 1999, provides a good discussion ofHoney’s difficulties with ‘educatedness’.) Now, there is indeed a greatdeal to say and to understand about the relationships between speechstyle and social evaluation, and this is particularly so in the 19th-centurysetting closely examined by Mugglestone in her book (see also theearlier treatments of Brook [1963, 1970], Chapman [1994], McIntosh[1998], Mitchell [2001], Phillipps [1984] and Wright [2000] discussionsthat range, indeed, well beyond the 19th century). It is disingenuous,however, to try and make a strong case for the dissociation just noted. Itis entirely understandable that Honey would wish to do so, of course, fordown that avenue lies the claim that there is, after all, some intrinsicsuperiority attaching to standard dialects they are the educated ones,reflecting literacy and learning entirely foreign to ‘barrow-boys orwasherwomen’. But we have subtly stepped aside here from the basicmatters of linguistic importance: linguistic adequacy and the fullyfledged nature of all dialects.Trudgill’s (1998) review of Honey (1997) makes very clearly, I shouldsay what are now familiar points. Two of the new ones are that theauthor is not a trained linguist, and thatHoney is not a modest man... he genuinely believes he hassucceeded, single handed, in demolishing the findings of generationsof linguistic scholarship... he certainly gets plenty of publicitywhich... he shows every sign of enjoying. (Trudgill, 1998: 457458)When Honey (2000a) then made a rejoinder to Trudgill’s review don’tworry, we are nearing the end of this circular comedy he seemed toagree that his linguistic credentials were indeed rather slight and that,yes, he did enjoy his media limelight. Sour grapes on Trudgill’s part,since Honey says that his celebrity ‘may just possibly have been because