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Linguistic Prejudice Working in Educational System

The document discusses linguistic prejudice in educational systems. It explores how teachers' and pupils' prejudices can present problems, including teachers judging pupils primarily on speech instead of other attributes. It also examines reasons for linguistic prejudice like linguistic incompetence and communicative incompetence between classes.

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Alizeh Khan
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24 views3 pages

Linguistic Prejudice Working in Educational System

The document discusses linguistic prejudice in educational systems. It explores how teachers' and pupils' prejudices can present problems, including teachers judging pupils primarily on speech instead of other attributes. It also examines reasons for linguistic prejudice like linguistic incompetence and communicative incompetence between classes.

Uploaded by

Alizeh Khan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Linguistic Prejudice Working in Educational System .

Now again we will explore the notion of linguistic prejudice in order to have better
view
about linguistic and social inequality. Here linguistic prejudices on the behalf of
members of
educational institutions are going to be discussed. Prejudice of Teachers: Prejudice of
Pupils.
Prejudice of Teachers:
Through educational system upper class prejudices prevail in society. School teachers
and
their pupils both have fixed speech stereotypes, and we can identify a number of ways
in which
teacher’s prejudice may present problems for their pupils. Concluded by (Giles &
Powerland
1925) there can be certain evidence that most of the teacher base their impressions of
pupils on
speech forms in preference to other sources of information
Example 1: Giles and Powerland compare three types of information; a photograph, a
recorded example of speech and an example of schoolwork and found that speech is
given
more weightage.BY: SIDDIQ ULLAH, Associate PROFESSOR OF
ENGLISH
COMPOSED BY: MUHAMMAD KAMIL (BS-English) 95
Example 2: It is also significant that, intelligence test and formal tests of ability used
by the
educational system put much emphasis on language.
Assuming that teacher’s form their first impressions of a pupil on the base of their
speech
there is a problem for a child whose speech leads to a negative impression in teachers’
mind. The
negative expectations by the teacher will lead to negative performance by the pupils..
Even the
teachers especially at primacy level do not speak standard British English, then how
can teacher
expect the student to speak standard British English. If teacher because of linguistic
prejudice is
not ready to speak standard British English, how can we expect a child to overlook his
linguist
prejudices in order to speak Standard British English?
Prejudice of Pupils:
First of all the questions arise whether linguistic prejudice exists in school children or
not.
Different research as Howard Giles (1925) show that; The children below secondary
school
would be unaware of difference between the local accent and accent of teacher. In the
secondary
school career, they were found aware of difference of accent and dialects.
Perhaps the children paid more attention to the message when it was in their accent a
Perhaps they were more inclined to trust the opinion of someone who sounded like
one of
themselves. It seems that the linguistic prejudice of both teachers and pupils are
potential sources
of serious problem in Education process. Here Hudson suggests no solution to these
problems.
His only purpose is to prove that linguistic prejudice can create Educational Problems
on the
behalf of both teachers and pupils.
Reasons for Linguistic Prejudice
Linguistic Incompetence:
Competence, defined by Chomsky, is person’s specific linguistic knowledge, and the
notion
of linguistic incompetence concerns the lack of linguistic knowledge of any language.
Ling
incompetence can be a feature of language of babies and L2 learners and if someone
forgot
his/her L1. Deficit Theory The claim that linguistic incompetence is found in the
children from
lower-class houses is known as Deficit Theory. This theory can be a dangerous
nonsense that
many school systems put the blame of their educational failure on the inadequacies of
the child.
Some children rarely give anything more than a single word in his answer to a teacher
and
some teachers conclude that the child is incompetent. But it is possible that fault lies
not in
child’s linguistic competence but in the situation. He might be a very good speaker in
his family
or friends. The student underestimated in this way faces a lot of problems during his
educational
career. Berntsen (1960’s) claimed that there are two ways of using language.
Elaborated Code:BY: SIDDIQ ULLAH, Associate PROFESSOR OF
ENGLISH
COMPOSED BY: MUHAMMAD KAMIL (BS-English) 96
It is a kind of speech which is relatively explicit and is a kind of speech required to be
used in a formal context or situation.
Restricted Code:
This is a kind of speech used between the people who know each other well.
It is claimed that people from lower working class use only restricted code. Whereas
most of the members of higher class use both restricted and elaborated ode according
to
circumstances. The Scale of Vocabulary .On the scale of vocabulary we can say that
there are no
significant differences in overall size of vocabulary of lower- and upper-class
children. The
above statement is about quantity of vocabulary. But when we come to the quality we
can say
there is remarkable difference in the use of vocabulary between the working-class
children with
low proficiency and upper class with high proficiency in language use.
Communicative Incompetence:
Communicative Competence is knowledge of language needed by a speaker or hearer
to
grasp the message effectively. It includes our knowledge or ability to use linguistic
forms
appropriately. Example: When to speak and when not, what to talk, with whom,
when, where
and in what manner?
There is a clear difference between who have been to school and those who not been
to
school. Non-schooled people uses non-logical thinking. While Schooled are taught
logical
thinking to solve Traditional Syllogism in order to create communicative competence.
Example:
All people who own houses pay a house tax. Bioma does not pay a heavy tax. Does
Bioma, own
a house? Some children do not want to learn the school’s schemata because of
Subtractive
Bilingualism. It creates a difficulty for school in persuading some children to accept
some of
schemata of school.
Some children do not want to learn the school’s schemata because of Subtractive
Bilingualism. It creates a difficulty for school in persuading some children to accept
some of
schemata of school. The communicative competence of Lower-class Children .Having
seen what
lower-class children do badly, it is only fair to look at some of the things they often do
well.
Example 1 Picture: A man standing by a broken window and shouting on a boy.
Described by
Middle class (Implicitly) .Working class (Explicitly) Example 2 Making up a Bed-
Time story.
Lower class girl: More fluent Lower-class boy: Least fluent Middle-class children: In
between
both of them.

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