Dialects and banning words

In the article linked below, there are multiple quotes which stand out and would be to use in the Language Change section of the exam.


I found it interesting to see that some schools in the UK, Ongar Academy, are banning specific words from being use in the school and in social settings. Some of these words are: 'coz', 'aint', 'like' and 'innit' which I find astonishing as many of these banned colloquialisms are dialectal words. In some places these words are part of children's everyday vocabulary and have been brought up to talk using these words, to force them to stop using them could hinder their confidence when participating in conversation.


Someone who is for the banning of slang words is James Sledd, who is a Professor of English at the University of Texas. He stated that, "to use slang is to deny allegiance to the existing order". Another person who is for the banning of words in schools is, the head teacher of Ongar Academy, David Grant. He is has listed many different reasons why the ban is a good thing: their dialect "may not favourably reflect on them when they attend college and job interviews". In a way he could be seen as correct as some dialects are seen as stereotypically 'smarter' than others, which is a poor judge of character, based only on dialect. The writer of the article, Stan Carey, later goes on to say that "to assume that students who use slang – ie, most of them – will do so in interviews does them a disservice."


Both Sledd and Grant show a very prescriptive attitude throughout the article, claiming that slang is a bad thing and shouldn't be used. However a descriptivist's opinion is also expressed in the article: Julia Snell. Snell is a Sociolinguist and states that, "to learn and develop, children must participate actively in classroom discussion; they must think out loud, answer and ask questions." She is saying that through participating in the classroom, they are exercising their social skills and building it. However she also spoke about how the child's behaviour changes when the teacher's focus is on the form of speech and not the content that the child is providing, "children may simply remain silent in order to avoid the shame of speaking 'incorrectly', and miss the interactions crucial to learning." The children won't participate and develop their social skills causing them to miss critical periods of learning. And it will all be because they are scared of expressing themselves which the teachers would have enforced. The writer of the article appeared to be, by the end, against the ban (standardisation). He write that student's are now policing each other's language which is clearly wrong.


A theory that would be useful to link to this is Howard Giles' Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT). Giles said, "when people interact they adjust their speech, their vocal patterns and their gestures, to accommodate to others." This could be used by descriptivist's to show that no matter whether they use a dialect in everyday life or not, children will adjust their language when needed, e.g. in an interview.


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/03/dialiects-slang-children-language-English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_accommodation_theory