Taking action to combat linguistic prejudice

While some schools are hitting the headlines with punitive slang bans, many others are teaching students about language – in an empowering way.

Here’s how my school took a critical decision and put teaching about language into our classrooms.

First Steps

January 27th, 2021 – the English department Whatsapp spirals into a frenzy of excited messages culminating in this request,

‘Can someone update me? Feel like I’m missing out on something amazing!’

‘EMC guest lecture – Dr April Baker-Bell on anti-black linguistic racism.’

Some of us had just watched Baker-Bell’s inspirational lecture on anti-black linguistic discrimination in the US. We were buzzing.

It was a passionate, intellectual tour de force. Arguing for linguistic justice, Baker-Bell interrogated the past / present power structures that uphold white linguistic supremacy, exposing its violent, dehumanising effect on black students. She described the transformative, anti-black linguistic racism pedagogy and praxis she developed and implemented in US (Detroit) classrooms.

It was a privilege to listen and learn.

Energised by the talk and fizzing with ideas, we had some big questions to consider in relation to our KS3 curriculum and the planned revamp of our Language SoL. How might Baker-Bell’s vision relate to a UK context? More specifically, what might an effective and relevant anti-linguistic discrimination pedagogy look like for our school, our students, in the North East of England?  

A follow-up meeting at the English and Media Centre (EMC) hosted by Dan Clayton and Dr Ian Cushing was helpful for clarifying key principles of critical language awareness (CLA) work and suggesting further reading.

I’ve written a statement here about CLA and why it matters to me as a teacher and literacy lead but I’d like to defer to sociolinguist and practitioner Alim (2010) for this overview,

By drawing on this tradition of educational research and praxis in CLA, we can offer some questions about language and power that, when explored in a classroom context, pave the way for developing rich and critical knowledge. They can also guide our thinking when we are planning schemes of learning (SoL):

1. What language varieties are stigmatised?
2. What language varieties are powerful?
3. Why is it like this? Whose values underpin this?
4. Who does it impact? What are the consequences?
5. How is it sustained?
6. How might we take action to challenge linguistic discrimination?

What might this look like in the classroom? How can we translate these into a SoL?

Fast forward a few months to the summer term and the rewrite of our Year 7 Language Unit. It was time to sharpen our critical tools and think about how to recalibrate our practice.

Previously, our Year 7 SoL presented language varieties in a fairly descriptive way, validating notions of appropriateness. Students would analyse their own language use, we would talk about code-switching between standard and non-standard forms but ultimately we’d accept that context determines language usage. We’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s how you speak with your mates on the bus but that’s different to how you may be expected to talk in the classroom or workplace. The context matters, doesn’t it?’

Although this approach affirms students’ use of non-standard language in ‘appropriate’ situations, it fails to challenge the deeper, discriminatory power structures at work. It doesn’t explore why context matters and what the effects of this could be.

With our redefined focus, we had six weeks to lay the foundations of CLA with Year 7, which we intend to build on subsequently in years 8 and 9. These were going to be small, modest steps in a curriculum journey.

It was also a collegiate process which evolved during the considerable pressures of the summer term 2021 (covid). We plan SoL in teams and there were three of us working on the Year 7 curriculum at this point.

We were also fortunate to be able to talk through some of our initial ideas with Graham Hall, Professor of Applied Linguistics from Northumbria University.

Overview

Here’s the medium term plan. We took a student-centred approach in so far as we waited to hear how our students responded to the first learning sequence before we decided where to go with the rest of it.

We were also guided by the principles set out by Baker-Bell (2020) in her Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy in Praxis.

Here’s a bit more info about each sequence.

1. Language and identity: How do I use language?

Students explore their own linguistic fingerprint, refer to UK and World maps to mark out the geographical influences on their language and compare how they use language with that of other significant people in their lives. There are active listening tasks, lots of talk – they interview each other, we share findings – and we introduce some linguistic concepts such as accent, dialect, Received Pronunciation, bi/multilingualism, code-switching, standard and non-standard English. They develop some meta-linguistic awareness and start to think about how language usage varies.

As teachers, we position ourselves as learners, ready to listen and learn from our students – there is not a single answer to this question and certainly not one ‘correct’ one.

Some details…

We frame the unit by telling our students they’re going to be linguists. This identity positions them as researchers of spoken language and allows us to establish some ethical guidelines.

We explain that linguists research how people use language and describe what they find without judging it. We introduce the concept that the language we use is part of our identity, just as our religion, sexuality or ethnicity can be a marker of who we are. Our aim is to pre-empt any inappropriate personal comments about other people’s language although we acknowledge that we will be discussing attitudes and feelings towards language use.

To model how we might think hard about our question, we film three teachers talking about how they use spoken language. An easy assumption to make is that all students are experts in the local dialect but, in fact, there are many different linguistic identities across our school community. So, to represent differing experiences, we choose three teachers with contrasting language backgrounds.

• Teacher One was born in the North East (NE). They discuss their use of the local Geordie accent and dialect, how it has changed over the years due to the impact of the workplace and university (outside the NE).
• Teacher Two is bilingual, speaking Gujarati and English, born in the North West. They talk about how different contexts affect their language use.
• Teacher Three is Scottish but has spent a long time in the NE. They describe when they would use Scottish dialect features.

Where’s the CLA?

This is a thread running throughout the classroom conversations. Our students are socialised, without a doubt, into standard language ideologies. That is, they internalise notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ English from an early age. From past experience, we anticipate that many students will use deficit vocabulary to characterise their own language use, describing it as ‘wrong’, ‘bad’ and ‘slang’, whereas they will positively evaluate so-called standard English forms as ‘proper’, ‘correct’ and ‘posh’. As it unfolds, we aren’t wrong, but decide to use our voice to gently reformulate each deficit expression uttered in the classroom so that it isn’t reinforced, ‘non-standard, not bad English’ or ‘standard English dialect, not good English’.

For me, this is still problematic because we’re reinforcing the binary distinction we’re aiming to challenge (standard / non-standard). However, I agree with my colleagues that before we can delve deeper into these issues and begin to interrogate these concepts, there’s groundwork to be done and these labels are convenient. Inevitably, our reformulations sit alongside some critical discussion of the terms but the deeper exploration comes in the next sequence.

2. Language, History and Culture. Why do Geordies call Newcastle the ‘toon’?

‘In order to understand more about Geordie and the other dialects and accents of English we have to go back to the roots of English and how it developed.‘

From our SoL

In this sequence, there’s a brief introduction to the history of the English language, the invention of the printing press and the rise of standard English. Many Geordie dialect words originate from Old English and several of its accent features can be traced back to the sounds of the Anglo-Saxon farmer. Students learn about familiar, modern day dialect words such as ‘bairn’ (OE baern ‘child’) and ‘burn’ (OE burna ‘small stream’) and how they were once used more widely across England. They listen to an Anglo-Saxon farmer (YouTube) and find that local pronunciations of ‘hoose’ and ‘toon’ are Old English pronunciations too. To understand why some speakers still use these sounds, students also learn about the Great Vowel Shift (the vowel sounds of many words changed between 1400 – 1700; it started in Southern England but didn’t reach some Northern areas).

That is why some people pronounce words differently, for example Old English ‘hoose’ changed to become ‘house‘.

From our SoL

Where’s the CLA?

This is our trump card because we can now show our students that Geordie speakers are using a very old form of English; the dialect has history, authenticity – we’ve demonstrated its provenance – and it can’t be dismissed as slang or uneducated speech. Just as importantly, they can see the arbitrary way that one dialect evolved into the dominant form of standard English. And that standard English dialect is not intrinsically better, or more correct, than any other dialect.

Indeed, we can wonder: what might have happened if Caxton had come from Newcastle? 

(Caxton brought the printing press to England and thereafter printed materials started to standardise the spelling lexical and grammatical patterns of the SE dialect.)

The next time you hear a Geordie call Newcastle the ‘Toon’ you will know that they are actually speaking Old English like a real Anglo-Saxon!

From our SoL

3. Study of the language features of the Geordie dialect.

Here, we delve deeper into the dialect by exploring lexical items, grammatical patterns and stylistic features. Students who are knowledgeable about the Geordie dialect become our experts in the lessons. We watch the NE celebrities Ant & Dec quiz each other on Geordie words including ‘spelk’, ‘radgie’, ‘gadgie’ and ‘canny’. It’s a canny clip from YouTube which generates lots of talk about meanings and real-world usage. Then, students analyse some grammatical forms, using linguistic terminology. They are also discussing who, where and why speakers might use these forms. They write their own sentences, perhaps choosing the second person plural pronoun ‘yous’, the possessive determiner ‘wor lass’, the intensifier ‘geet hard’, verb forms such as ‘gan’ and ‘hoy’ or the negative construction, ‘divvent’.

They also analyse this poster which is circulated on social media by our local council. It’s a great opportunity to talk about language and identity, audience and purpose. It also feeds into some creative writing activities. Fortunately, the actual writer is kind enough to send us their explanation for using Geordie dialect features. We ask students to predict the five reasons they stated – then we reveal them.

Have a go – what do you think the writer said?

Ta da- here are the answers. Discuss!

1. Cutting through the noise on social media – doing something different to attract readers.
2. North East heritage – appealing to local pride and to resonate further afield due to the popularity of this dialect.
3. It’s funny – use of humour and entertainment to pique people’s interest.
4. People love local – it appeals to their sense of pride and loyalty.
5. People don’t expect humour from a council!

Where’s the CLA?

We’re building on the previous sequence by showing that the dialect follows rules. It is not a sub-standard form of language, it has regularity. It also contributes to the picture we are building up about how local language is used to mark identities and to achieve particular interactional purposes.

4. Language and Power.

Now that we’ve built up some rich knowledge about language, it’s time to explore issues of language and power as they relate to our students’ social worlds. We want them to respond to CLA issues in a personal way while also developing some critical awareness.

We design a series of short statements which the students have to think hard about before they agree or disagree. We take the think-pair-share approach then widen to whole-class. Students use whiteboards to write down their initial thoughts.

This interaction pattern is easily reversed so that when a new point is raised, students go back to their pairs to explore it further.

Responding to statements in this way is a simple but extremely powerful tool for generating dialogic talk – teachers work hard to expand ideas, evaluate views and develop the all important critical stance.

Statements

1. I’ve never been corrected for the way I speak.
2. Speaking in Geordie dialect is allowed in school.
3. People are judged because of the way they speak.
4. People don’t need to change the way they speak; they just need to change the way they listen.
5. All varieties of language are equal.

In practice, two or three of these statements are enough to last a whole lesson as students have a lot to say and the issues raised overlap.

These three sentences are a good starting point for extending responses.

1. Why do you think this is?
2. How does it make you feel?
3. Is it right?

Students also analyse these powerful illustrations drawn by artist Wendy Wong, and developed out of a UKLA funded school-based project run by Dr Ian Cushing, focusing on students’ experiences of linguistic discrimination.

For anyone trained in Philosophy for Children (P4C), these images would be a strong stimulus for a philosophical enquiry.

(One of my students asked, ‘why are the hands so big?’ P4C educators – you’ll see the potential in this question for a lengthy discussion!)

How did students respond?

From my lessons, there are several things that strike me as important to share because they help us understand why CLA is crucial for young people and why it has a place in our classroom.

1. The statements resonated and students wrote a lot, very quickly, filling their whiteboard with initial responses. The vast majority said that they’d had their speech corrected by either family members or teachers (Primary school) and they used the words ‘confused’, ‘uncomfortable’, ‘annoyed’ and ‘frustrated’ to describe how it made them feel.
2. Many students felt strongly that it wasn’t right to correct someone’s speech as it was tantamount to a personal attack. This reflects how an assault on a person’s language can feel to a young person like an attack on their identity.
3. There was an awareness of the double-standard in language policing – this is the idea that those who do the correcting often use non-standard forms themselves.
4. They talked about how negative attitudes to certain types of language are fixed and passed on through the generations. Some students talked about how schools and society play a part in sustaining this.
5. Language discrimination is an issue of social class. Students connected ‘poshness’ and wealth to power and control. Related to this, the label ‘Geordie speaker’ is a loaded signifier of identity, which may be claimed or rejected by particular students.
6. The notion that speakers shouldn’t have to change the way they speak, but instead listeners need to change the way they listen, seemed to cause the most cognitive dissonance. In other words, when students were suggesting that speakers’ accents need to be intelligible, I would ask, ‘Do they? Why? Isn’t it the responsibility of the listener?’ A simple analogy which the students seem to understand is that if a person lived somewhere for long enough, they would tune into the local accent. Of course, the concept of how we listen goes much further than this and includes listening without prejudice or bias. But in relation to issues raised by the students, this was a way to introduce that concept.
7. Some students made explicit links between language, power and systemic discrimination, often in response to Wong’s illustrations which proved to be an incredibly powerful stimulus.

Here’s a response to them which reveals an understanding of intersectional issues.

There’s a lot in here to unpick with Year 7 students who may have very different social worlds from each other – be prepared!

5. Language, agency and action

It’s the end of term and the final learning sequence. We want students to have a creative and personal response to the issues that have been raised throughout the SoL.

First, they watch Jamila Lyiscott’s brilliant Ted Talk ‘3 ways to speak English’ and spend some time talking about it.

Finally, there’s a choice of task. We want students to respond in a personal way to the issues of language, power and identity that have resonated with them.

Next steps

Soon, we’ll be thinking about how to build on this work in year 8.

We might decide to dig deep into a single issue, such as accent prejudice, or do some recording and analysis of speech to uncover the versatility and creativity of spoken language.

We have the English National Curriculum on our side. Not only does it set out that students should analyse the differences between speech and writing, ‘Standard English’ and other varieties of English, but it states that we can go beyond its specifications to deliver stimulating lessons.

Let’s make the most of this freedom to bring these issues into focus for our students. Let’s validate their language use, sharpen their awareness and start to combat linguistic prejudice through education.

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Thanks to my planning team colleagues, Helen Bell and Sheetal Patel, & the rest of the department for taking on something new. Team effort.

Thanks also @EngMediaCentre for hosting Dr Baker-Bell’s lecture.

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Recommended sources for CPD.

Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Language and Pedagogy. New York and London: Routledge. 

Carter, A and Cushing, I (2021). ‘You’ll never be as good as the white kids in their language’: using Young Adult fiction to explore language discrimination in schools. Available at https://bit.ly/3vh1omb

Godley, A and Reaser, J (2018). Critical Language Pedagogy. Interrogating Language, Dialects, and Power in Teacher Education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Lexispodcast, (2020). Ian Cushing E5. Available at https://anchor.fm/lexispodcast/episodes/Ian-Cushing—E5-egjpe5

McNichol, Stewart, (2017). Future Englishes – Is Standard English the Only Educational Standard?  Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvsSF2BLcVY

The University of Sheffield, (2021). What place does grammar have in our schools? Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VGpwHqs7NA