Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Evaluative Reactions to the Language of Disadvantage 167confident when asked to rate aspects of personality that are more or lessdirectly relatable to the speech sample itself (e.g. fluency, reading ability,pronunciation), and less comfortable when asked to assess such things asthe happiness of the child and family socioeconomic status. It may bethat a sort of halo effect is at work here: ratings about which judges aremore confident are allowed to sway decisions that are requested undermore dubious or far-fetched headings. Besides confirming, then, thenow-familiar differences in judges’ perceptions of disadvantaged children,the study also shows that although willing to fill in all the scalesprovided raters are clearly more comfortable with assessments that itseems more reasonable to make, given the stimulus sample provided.This variation in comfort level, and the commendable caution that mustunderpin it, are matters that researchers would do well to take to heart.Finally here, the differences attributable to judges’ gender also suggestpossibilities that may be important for those engaged in rating-scaleresearch.The most general implication of all these evaluation studies is clear.Listener-evaluators (teachers being a most important group here) areprone to stereotyped and often negative views of certain languagevarieties and their speakers. The importance of this derives from theevidence that different language varieties are not linguistically deficient.While the data about teachers’ attitudes and evaluations simply reveal, inone context, a perceived relationship between certain language varietiesand social deficit that occurs in other settings, teachers’ views andbehavior are of rather special significance in the lives of disadvantagedchildren. In a review of many sociolinguistic studies, Robinson (1972:116) pointed out that speech may not always be an irrelevant orerroneous clue to a child’s ability: ‘if the self-fulfilling prophecy isfulfilled, then paradoxically the argument that certain language behavioursare associated with educational attainments has a reasonable(even if unnecessary) foundation’. This is a useful point, although it doesnot detract from the thrust of the studies reported here.There are really two related issues in contention: one is thedemonstration that speech style can influence perceptions and evaluations;the other is the manner in which the attitudes and beliefs thatunderlie such assessments may affect children’s school progress. Thelatter is bound to be a more speculative aspect than the former, since it isso difficult to tease out, in natural settings, the influence of one variableamong many. And, as Robinson implies, there is always the possibilitythat, because of pressure and prejudice, relationships found betweenspeech and school success may actually have social validity. We may