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Class Talk
Author(s) -
HONEYFORD R.
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
international journal of language and communication disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.101
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1460-6984
pISSN - 1368-2822
DOI - 10.3109/13682827209011575
Subject(s) - psychology , competence (human resources) , developmental psychology , linguistics , linguistic competence , cognition , mathematics education , social psychology , philosophy , neuroscience
The linguistic problems of working class children in schools which are essentially middle‐class in their language and cultural expectations have been highlighted by the work of Bernstein and Lawton. The inter‐dependence of language and cognitive growth is also now well documented. But there is little to show how the two groups of significant adults in children's lives ‐ parents and teachers ‐ compare in their linguistic competence and habits. It was postulated that in making the transition from home to school pupils in a comprehensive school serving a working‐class area of the north‐west were involved in a process of linguistic adaptation. Two groups were chosen at random after stratifying. These consisted of ten teachers sub‐divided into 2times5 groups to represent Arts and Science; and fifteen parents stratified into 3times5 sub‐groups to represent the three ability streams into which the school at that time segregated its pupils. Speech samples were recorded for both groups in standardised, non‐directed group discussions and individual interviews. These were then transcribed and analysed. The analysis was of limited focus ‐ only certain structural and lexical items were considered ‐ phonetic qualities and errors were ignored. The categories into which the speech was analysed corresponded to those of the Elaborated and Restricted Codes postulated by Bernstein. Twenty‐five categories were compared and, by means of non‐parametric statistics the significance of the differences between the performances of the groups and sub‐groups, were evaluated. The direction and magnitude of the differences were as predicted in twenty‐three of the categories. Within the limitations imposed by such small samples the hypothesis was considered to be confirmed. This finding has significance for all those who handle working‐class children either for educational purposes or remediation. An awareness of the structural and lexical gulf between the speech of middle‐class adults and the working‐class child is indispensable for effective communication ‐ a systematic investigation of pronunciation and accent differences would probably indicate that the linguistic gulf is greater than that revealed by the present study.