190 Pidgin and Creole Languages
The bioprogram hypothesis was first put forward in detail
Bickerton's Roots of Lazgurige (Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1981)
sequently modified. A good overview of the issues can be
IrnpIications (Cambri cietal Problems
The example from
Hall and Charles
particular on social dialects and
y practical implications since it is
A discussion of the pr
English can be found in
Hawaii: The Post Creol
Suzanne Romaine's arti
Guinea: The Colonial Pre
(eds.), Stahcs Change of roblems arising in school which are
ong minority children. As one of society's
192 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems 193
children of West Indian origin do worst. Data from 1969and 19 laced into special education classes and vocational
from the Toronto Board of Education showed that students many countries. The indiscriminate use of psycho-
non-English-speaking background who immigr on newly arrived immigrants to the United States in
performed worse academically and were in lower academic streams is century resulted in the deportation of persons
than those born in Canada. In the United States Grade 12 ere assessed to be feeble-minded, largely because they did
Hispanic students are about three and a half years behind national glish. The number of foreigners deported for
norms in academi
elsewhere, for example in Europe. To b
should be noted that a percentage of mi isguided use of psychological assessment is also in con-
attend school anyway. In West Germany, for example, abou part to blame for the over-representation of ethnic
per cent do not attend school, and more than 50 per cent do no y students in classes for the mentally retarded. Constructs
obtain any kind of leaving certificate. Drop-out r earning disability, language proficiency, and
children in the secondary schools are higher than for indigeno are poorly understood by many educators. In Britain,
pupils. In Denmark during the years 1975-8, not a single child , a government inquiry into the special educational
Turkish or Pakistani origin (the two largest
Denmark) finished secondary school.
After leaving school, these minorities also have whose first language is not English, at least one of
of being unemployed than indigenous chi1 ed in assessing the child's needs must be
example, the unemployment rate for foreig speak the child's language. However, the
twice as high as for Swedes. The economic returns from schooling endations of the report make no mention of the
are in general much greater for those who are advantaged, i.e.
middle-class, to e m s of mastery of standard
achieved better in guage of society is), non-
it wouldn't necess peech is seen as illogical, and bilingualism as a problem.
countries have access to a smaller per too long ago that minority children in countries such as
economic resources than the majority. This i the Unite$ States, Britain, and Sweden were subjected
that ethnic minorities are over-represented in violenc+in school for speaking their home language.
that can be used to measure educational, psy schoolchildren in the Tornedal area of Sweden had
and social failure, e.g. rates of crime, alco logs on their shoulders or wear a stiff collar because
bances, etc. This, however, masks a lot of important differences
among various distinctive minority groups. Some south-east Asian
minority students in both the United States and Britain have
managed to perform better than their White mainstream classmates.
Their success has been hard-won and such individuals and the
groups they belong to have suffered backlash from the dominant f the early literature appeared to indicate that bilingualism
group with whom they are competingfor places in higher education, negative influence on children's development. Beliefs
jobs, etc. harmful and undesirable effects of bilingualism have
For some time there has been an unacknowledged relationship
between bilingualism and special education. There are many
reasonswhy disproportionate numbers of minority-languagechildren
194 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems 195
explanation for the failure of certain groups of children. It h sample independently judged as sloppy, paired with a
been argued that it is raph and writing sample judged to be good, etc. Assess-
develop and maintain proficiency in more than one langua f students' likely success in school was linked most strongly
Linguists have argued that learning two languages need not b speech sample. Those who had speech samples judged to
handicap. If that wer underachievers, even though they
advantage to send their c d written work and drawings independently
where they learn French
indergarten teachers in Toronto were asked
whom they felt were likely to fail by Grade
Educators have also fough y felt would be highly successful. Those who
because they were regarded s a second language were regarded to be likely to fail
as often as other students. Once labels such as 'limited
have, however, argued t
structurally complex,
logical arguments as standard English. Moreover, because such
varieties play an important role in speaker identity, change
towards standard English may be resisted. Recall from Chapter 4 ptions about students' proficiencyin English affect
that inner-city-area Black youths who socialized in street gangs
were those who used the most non-standard forms of speech and
were most opposed to the value system of the school. Not only did ding rather than activities associated with
they have the highest rate of failure, but they were also regarded
as those most likely to fail by their teachers.
Many factors are responsible for the poor achievement of some
scho~olchildren,e.g. lack of exposure to the school language,
linguisticlcultural mismatch between home and school, inferior ential theory about the connection
quality of education provided to minority students, socio-economic
status, disrupted patterns of intergenerational cultural transmission
as a result of minoritylmajority-status relations, and attitudes of greater syntactic complexity, as
the majority to the minority and vice versa. Many linguists now greater proportion of subordinate
conclude, however, that negative attitudes towards non-standard makes meaning explicit, and one
speech and bilingualism are more decisive in determining school ticular situation to understand the
outcomes than actual linguistic differences themselves.
It has been shown that teachers already tend to have negative cialization into different classes
expectations of minority children. In one study teachers were
asked to evaluate samples of speech, writing, drawing, and photo-
graphs of some school pupils. In particular, they were asked to
say how successful they thought a child was likely to be based on take the following types of stories told by 5-
the evidence from the samples. The experimenters obtained when asked to describe what they saw in a
independent ratings of all the samples and then presented them in nterest here is how the participants
various combinations. Thus, one hypothetical child might have a ture are referred to by the choice of pronouns or nouns.
196 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems 197
The elaborated version explicitly states who did what and
governed as standard varieties and just as 'capable of express-
immediately understood without seeing the pictures:
ogical arguments as standard speech. Logicality, however,
mes linked with middle-class language because it is middle-
Elaborated version
rences in the classroom
mmon speech event at many
s assumptions about what is
rnportant' is defined by the
marks made by some children that
her will consider important. The
ed one child who volunteered a story, 'Is this very, very
because we don't have much time this morning.' The
it is or not, but I want to say it
the United States and elsewhere to provide deprived
children with compensating experience and exposure
ry should have a simple statement of one topic and
comments leading to the resolution of some action
I code at home. Between 1965 and 1970 $10 billion was s ot inherently important or
1
these kinds of programs, the best-known of which was s to talk about a topic in such a
Headstart. In some cases educational programs were prop
which used methods designed for teaching English as a sec
language because it was argued that the children lacked a Ian cted by the teacher were
When results were not as good as had been hoped for
to be assumed on the part of the
of environment which would lead to school success. named even when they were in plain
mothers who had some deficit. Obviously, if this sort
er reacts to two different styles of
and another by a White child. In
that the IQ differences found between chi1
class and ethnic backgrounds were genetic
Linguists who have attacked deficit the
new coat and I already got it and it's got a lot on it and
t yesterday and when I saw it, my brother was going
200 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems 201
children and have no reason to talk about the stories in books.
Roadville children are used to looking at books at home. Yet
neither community prepares its children for the uses of written and
spoken language they will encounter at school. At school they
must learn not just how to tell and write stories, but how to talk
about them.
Similarly, questions these children hear at home are not like
those which teachers use at school. Most of the teacher's questions
are about things to which the teacher already has the answer or ors je repose ma question: 'Que fait le papa de Daniel'? [Now 1'11
are requests to name things, e.g. what color is that? Another my question again. What's Daniel's father doing?]
frequent type is really a rhetorical question about things in
isolation from their context, e.g. I wonder why he did that? One
of the teacher's complaints was that Roadville and Trackton
children seemed unable to answer even the simplest questions.
One local grandmother noticed the difference between questions answer the teacher wants is, Le papa de Danielpromdne [a
at home and school when she commented, 'We don't talk to our 'Daniel's father is walking the goat', but she fails to elicit
children like you folks do; 31:don't ask them about colors' names
and things.' noun il 'he' to refer
Literacy is acquired in the context of schooling. In Chapter 3 I
showed how what goes by the name of 'logic' in language is mainly he' refers to. The
an acquired way of talking and thinking about language which is re the child tries something else which
made possible largely by literacy. There are many school uses of
language which derive their mode of interpretation from literate
uses of language. Take, for example, the type of test or quiz in
which children are given a question such as: 'Henry VIII had two
wives. True or false?' Why is it that the correct answer is false?
Henry, of course, had more than two wives, but that means he had
at least two. Nevertheless, the conventional interpretation of this
utterance is that Henry VIII had only two wives, although there is estion, the pupil is using a rule which
nothing in the linguistic form to indicate that this should be so.
It is hard to have judgements about speech independentl)~of
notions of correctness we are taught in school when we learn to
read and write. Studies have shown that teachers routinely correct
children in school for using forms that are quite acceptable in
speech. Moreover, they use these forms themselves in the class-
room. Not surprisingly, the children are confused about what the e friend would certainly think the teacher did not know how
teacher wants. An example can be taken from a French study, any on a conversation. Only in the classroom could such an
where a teacher is trying to get a child to be explicit. In this extract unt as a legitimate exchange. By
she is asking the child about a story which has been read in class. is nothing ungrammatical, but
The teacher is labelled T and the child P. rules governing communicative
\
202 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems
competence. The teacher is trying to impose on the child a
language which is in fact too explicit for the context without
explaining why it is 'better' to do so.
Why Johnny can't read
Standards of language use and standard languages are essentially
arbitrary conventions which can be learned only by going to
school. This is precisely why they are so effective in maintaining
barriers between groups. There has been much discussion in the
popular press and academic professions about the problem of
decliningstandards. Standards change. This is true of language no
less than other cultural products like fashion. People have com-
plained about the decline of English since at least the fifteenth
century. In 1989 Prince Charles angered British schoolteachersG
when he complained publicly that his staff could not read or write
English properly. Around the same time, the Times Higher
Education Supplement carried a front-page article in which several
Oxford professors complained about the low standards of English
used by students at Oxford University and suggested the possibility
of introducing remedial instruction. Interestingly, these remarks
came in the wake of the British government's inquiry into the
teaching of English, which was full of recommendations for
tolerance of pupils' varieties of English. The same report also
stressed the need for standard English to play a part in a new
national curriculum.
Testing: who decides what is right?
There can be no doubt that whatever knowledge it is schools test,
it is unevenly distributed among schoolchildren in a way which
follows patterns of social class stratificationand ethnic divisions in
society. When test scores are looked at longitudinally, it appears
that the population is doing less well. In the United States there
is alarm that SAT (Scholastic Achievement Test) scores are
declining. There is, however, no reason to panic about this. When
the SAT was normed, its population represented a small minority
of collcge-bound White middle-class students. It tests the extent
to which those who take it have acquired the middle-class norms
necessary for success in higher education. No wonder standards
Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems
appear to have declined when the same set of norms is being used
to test an ethnically more diverse population. The crisis in
y is in some respects an academic problem
efinitions of literacy, competence, etc. have been
wed to such an extent that they make children's experience
anguage at school discontinuouswith everyday communicative
iven the inherent bias in the school's curriculum towards the
guage and culture of the dominant group in society, it would
surprising if minority children managed to score better than
ainstream children, even when a foreign-language background
ning variable. Research has shown that when tests
e aimed specificallyat the kinds of knowledge
ave, but which majority children lack, the
do well. A Black high-school group averaged 36
n a White group on a test called BITCH-100
lack Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity), which con-
lary items in use in Afro-American slang. This
s reflects the fact that the White students had
ortunity to acquire the words than the Blacks through
cultural experience.
Chapter 3 that just because children do not choose
answers which the testers decide are the correct ones does not
an that their early experience is deprived or that they are
t means that they have not had the experiences
ts foqus on. There is no unequivocal relationship
one4set of cultural experiences and the abstract
igence. IQ tests are designed to exclude any
ays in which minority children have gained
ince many aspects of intelligence are learned or
ugh specific cultural experiences in a particular
guage or variety, it is impossibleto devise a test of intelligence
ch is context-free and culture-independent. This means that all
interpreted in the light of the effect of a particular
minority background, and knowledge about bilingualism,
another language is involved.
n IQ test given to low-income Portuguese-speaking children
,many children are unable to answer the question:
at animal do we get bacon? Despite the fact that pork is
food for most Portuguese families, children are not
204 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems 205
familiar with the term bacon. If the question had been rephrased lity' in schools having a high concentration of such children
so as to ask: From what animal do we get sausages?,children would w incomes. The budget for bilingual educa-
have been able to answer it. In another item children are asked steadily until in 1980 it had reached its peak of
whether it is better to give money to a well-known charity or to a The money was intended to support initiatives in
beggar. Within the children's culture, organized charities are education that would later be financed through state and
almost non-existent, so the only real choice is to give the money the first few years the emphasis was on elementary
to the beggar. The testers, however, want the child to pick the
charities. The cultural bias in testing procedures such as these Bilingual Education Act provided opportunities
has led some researchers to recommend alternative hools to Set up bilingual education programs, it did not place
assessment which rely less heavily on formal tests. dual schools under any legal obligation to do so. Litigation
ought to the courts on behalf of various groups of minority
Taking appropriate action ome cases to court-mandated bilingual education -
rams. The most famous precedent-setting case was that of
Political mobilization of linguistic minorities and le v. Nichols. In this instance a class action suit was brought
prompted by equality of opportunity has led in some plat Francisco Unified School District by Chinese
development and funding of programs aimed at rectifying dents in 1970. It was argued that no special
inequalities. In some cases, however, the courts hav ms were available to meet the linguistic needs of these
battlegrounds for issues which, although not primarily linguistic, s a consequence, they were prevented from deriving
have had fundamental linguistic implications. The Ann Arbor instruction in English and were not receiving equal
decision on Black English in the United States in 1979 is an
example of litigation brought under Equality of Opportunity plaintiffs made their appeal not on linguistic grounds, but
legislation, which actually makes no mention of language. It of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that 'no
guarantees simply that no one shall be denied equal educational United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or
opportunity on account of race, color, sex, or national origin. origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the
Black parents in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a suit against the school of, or be subject to discrimination under any program or
board for failure to take into account the linguistic background of ing Fderal financialassistance'. In their case against
their children. ard, h e plaintiffs requested a program of bilingual
The issue of language, in particular the autonomy of Black gh the case was lost, the Supreme Court over-
English, became salient in this case because it was argued that a the decision of the federal district court in 1974. ~t
language group, i.e. speakers of Black English, coincided with a t 'the Chinese-speaking minority receives fewer
racial group. The Ann Arbor case probably could not have the English-speaking majority from respondents'
occurred or been won without the research done on social dialects ch denies them a meaningful opportunity to
in the 1960s and 1970s, which supported the argument that Black onal program-all earmarks of disrrimina-
English was not a deficient, but only different, linguistic system. The ulations'. This was a landmark decision
judge, who ruled in favor of the Black parents and their children, e it meant that for the first time in the United States the
was clearly influenced by the expert testimony of sociolinguists. n-English speakers were recognized as a civil
After the United States Federal Government passed the Bilin-
gual Education Act of 1968,over $7 million were appropriated for ,however, the Chinese students had dropped the
1969-70 to support educational programs which were aimed at the for bilingual education. Like the Ann Arbor ruling which
special educational needs of children of 'limited ~n~lish-speaking ply that the school board had to 'take appropriate action'
206 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as societal Problems 207
to ensure equal participation for all students in its educati bilingual education to all non-English-speaking students;
programs, the Supreme Court decision did not press for se, it would lose all federal funds.
specific remedy. It pointed out only two possib escribed by the federal
teaching English to the students or teaching them i ernment, however, was opposed in its aim and principles to
only that the school board rectify the situation kind of enrichment program Dade County had pioneered in
inequality of educational opportunity. The rem early 1960s. The federal regulations supported only transitional
Sari Francisco school board was to set up a bili gualism, which meant that the students and school board
program for Chinese, Filipino, and Spanish language tudents had become in
made up over 80 per cent of the students with little 0 ainstream English-only
Teaching in English as a second hnguage was offered t vision to maintain the
minority groups.
The Lau decision led to other use and support by
of the servicesand eligibility provided through the tion in both languages
tion ~ c t .Moreover, many states passed bills which m tenance program, the students would be
gual education. This followed the precedent set by struction in their native language until
in 1971. The Lau decision was also instrumental in set
policy guidelines at the federa n-American children
Office of Education to decide than other Hispanics
compliance with the Civil Rights Act and the Lau ca chools elsewherein the United States, they still experience
document was produced which is referred to as th failure than Anglo students. There are, however, some
It directed school boards to identify students wit low-tuition schools for children of working-class back-
home language other than English and to assess t in Dade County (and elsewhere in the United States).
in English and the home language. Elementary-school students h is taken to bilingual education. he
were to be taught in their dominant language until they were able by Cuban teachers, who in most cases
to benefit from instruction entirely in English. pre-Castro Cuba. Classroom instruc-
The significanceof the Lau Remedies is that they prescribed a hat prevail in Miami's predominantly
transitional form of bilingualism and specifically rejected the nd Spanish is the social language of these
teaching of English as a second language as a remedy for that most subjects are taught in English,
elementary students. When the Bilingual Education Act came 1s is, nevertheless, central. Literacy in
up for renewal in 1978, a large number of school systems had lingual Cuban standards is expected
implemented the Lau Remedies and set up bilingual education an be attributed to
programs. concept of language
In 1975 the US Civil Rights Task Force examined a number of cause no curricular
school systems around the country which were receiving federal s are based on it.
assistance. In the case of Dade County in Florida, for instance, it actual number of children in the United States who
stated that the constitutional rights of over 10,000 elementary ts only a quarter of
pupils of various language backgrounds (e.g. Portuguese, Greek, s intended. Most of these schools do
Arabic, Korean, etc.) were being violated. Since the LaU Remedies native language of the children and
had ruled out instruction in English as a second language as instruction in the native language for
an acceptable educational program, the county was directed to
208 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems
:maintenance or assimilation.?
is ironic that one of the reasons why bilingual
tion has been viewed so negatively by many people in the
d States is due to the fear that it aims to maintain languages,
Itures, other than English. Often the mostAmerican children who had been placed in classes for t
ts are those of immigrant background forretarded on the basis of the results of IQ tests adm
no provision was made, and who were eager to assimilate
le to the mainstream American way of life.
erson, who emigrated from Germany at age 9 and was
An out-of-court
regular English schooling, wrote a letter to the New York
provision was made:
(18 Feb. 1981)in which he said: 'I am convinced a bilingual
auld have impeded my integration into American
ther, who was Yiddish-speaking, wrote (New York
Nov. 1976): 'The bilingual method is probably more
g than helpful to many. Exposure to English throughout
results in more rapid and more effective progress than
in a bilingual process.'
mer President Reagan also spoke out strongly against the
ining native languages. He condemned the
erican. In a speech made to a group of mayors he
ed in the New York Times, 3 Mar. 1981): 'It is
wrong and against American concept to have a bilingual
at is now openly, admittedly dedicated to
In the years that followed this decision, close to 10,000 native language and never getting them adequate
children were reinstated in regular classrooms in sh so they can go out into the job market.' President
remarks ecdo those of one of his predecessors, Theodore
t, who in 1918said: 'We have room for but one language
s the English language, for we intend to see that
ible turns our people out as Americans, of American
ty, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house and
room for but one loyalty, and that is a loyalty to the
ticulturalism and multilingualism runs deep
One of its more recent manifestations can
1960s and 1970s no one had had much experience in devisi d in the English Language Act passed in California and
ates, which makes English the official language for public
ut through the efforts of the organization called
d by former Senator Hayakawa to lobby for a
Lau Remedies. al amendment which would make English the official
210 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Litzguistic Problems as Societal Problems .
language of the United States. The organization also seeks to e different in the two countries and so are the contexts in which
repeal laws mandating multilingual ballots and voting materials, quisition takes place. In Canada the students are predominantly
to restrict government funding to short-term transiti und and the language of instruction is
and to control immigration so that it does not e society as a whole (i.e. French),
tbwards language segregation. It welcomes members 'who a ugh in the wider international context, it is a language of
that English is and must remain the only language of the Pe derable prestige and importance. Despite their superficial
of the United States'. rity, submersion of minorities in English-only programs in
Early in 1988ex-Senator Hayakawa sent a lett anadian immersion programs are different
Washington, DC, area informing them: they lead to different results. In the United States there is no
r institutional recognition to the students'
We have embarked upon a policy of so-called 'biling
foreign languages in competition with our own . . . pro1 nority languages. Just because some groups of minority students
education in public schools and multilingual ballots threa urvive in immersion or submersion programs does not mean
alonglanguage lines .. .help us put together the mone are necessarily the most appropriate means of education for
a vigorous campaign to restore English to its rig
of at1 Americans. All contributions are fully of program chosen will typically, though not always,
enough problems as a nation without having to t ences in different contexts. Immersion
preter. We can still reverseourmisguided course,and secureforourselves n additive bilingualism. They seek to add
and our children the blessings of a common language . . . In a pluralistic guage without threatening the first. The child's native
nation such as ours, government should foster the similarities that unite ntaCt and develops, even though the child has not had
us rather than the differences that separate us. same amount of instruction as its monolingual peers in
In 1983 President Reagan proposed to cut the federal budget IS. Most of the positive results of bi-
for bilingual education and to relax restrictions on the remedies ined by researchers in Canada from this
used by local school districts in educating children who were of e outcome of the so-called language
limited proficiency in English. The Congress took testimony from could also be described as additive
the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) and US
English. In its testimony NARE argued that there were demonstr- ion prqgrams a second language gradually under-
able gains from bilingual education, as evidenced by improved test ncy in'the first. This has been called subtractive or
scores and enhanced self-esteem and community i~v01vement. the development of the child's first
They also stressed the value of languages other than English as a and is incomplete. Many researchers,
natural resource, which should be built upon and expanded. US candinavia, have claimed that the development of
English, on the other hand, claimed that bilingual education children in both languages is fragmentary and incomplete.
retarded the acquisition of English, and the integration of the y are thus referred to as 'semilingual', or 'doubly semilingual'.
student into the mainstream. esults for bilingualism, e.g. lower IQ, poorer
anguage tests, etc., have been obtained largely in
ction with subtractive bilingualism in submersion-type pro-
Inzmersion or submersion? tions of this are clear, although they
Many politicians and educators in the United States have inappro-
priately cited the success cf the Canadian immersion programs as ion in individual countries is complex and
justification for English immersion as a suitable form of education ptions are available for different kinds of
for linguistic minorities in the United States. However, the issues a variety of circumstances, which vary
212 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems 213
from place to place. We can compare German and began to rise in the European countries, many people began
for the education of the children of migrant worke gue that the guest-workers should be sent home because they
western Europe in large numbers in the 1960sand 1970s n the social services and prevented nationals from
labor during a period of economic expansion. In Germ
are six different types of classes in which guest-worker ducation for foreign children in Sweden falls into three cate-
receive their education. They can attend ordinary Ger es. The most common provides instruction in Swedish in
with minima] or no consideration given to their lack sh classes. The child may have already had some
German. They can also attend special classes for guest-wor h as a second language. There may also be
children only. These follow the ordinary German curriculum. tuition given in some subjects in Swedish and/or
main difference is that the children are segregated other tongue. The school decides whether the child needs
German-speaking children. If they attend international pr lementary tuition in Swedish, and if so, it is compulsory.
~choolsthey can obtain intensive training in German as ng of and in the mother tongue is, however, voluntary,
language. Here the aim is transitional because the chi1 in areas where there are sufficient numbers of students who
expected at a later stage to be integrated into the ordinar is also an option whereby a child attends classes
classes. one Swedish teacher and one immigrant teacher in classes
Another type of transitional program provides i h contain Swedish children and children from one immigrant
native language for several years and German as a p only. These are called compound or cooperation classes.
Some of these lead to compulsory transfer to ht separately, each by its own teacher through
classes after Grade 6. Some of the classes, ative language for part of the time, and then
optional transfer. Often the mother-tongue teachers do not together with the other children for the rest of the time.
the children moved because they fear they will lose their jobs. ,the amount of mother-tongue teaching is limited and
German teachers may also feel pressure from Ge ally because the aim is that by Grade 4, the
who do not want their children in the same classes with fore en should be able to be taught in Swedish only.
children. In practice, many children drop out after the sixth y traditional assimilationist model of transitional
or are not transferred. Finally, some children have the option o
attending mother-tongue classes which follow the inally, there is al$o the possibility of attending classes where
the home countries and are organized by them. This is also struction is dohe mainly through the medium of the mother
segregationist model, and does not aim at bilingual e with Swedish as a second language. The classes consist of
at the same time it is the only program which attempt me nationality. This continues for the first three
of the native language and culture. From the pers unt of time given to Swedish steadily increasing.
child's chances of returning to the home country and reintegrat 11 immigrant pupils attended such classes in
only the last option is a reasonable one. The German cla he model preferred by many immigrant groups
segregate them and alienate them most by assimila as been increasing pressure to set up more of
German values and ideology. We can see how the e s. It has as its goal maintenance of the mother
the children of migrant workers receive contributes to the repro-
duction of the powerless status of the parents at the same time as not possible to evaluate policies except within the context
it allows the host country to maintain control over the migrants' relationship between the host and sending countries, and
destiny. When economic expansion began to decline in the 1970s, atus and function of minorities in the host country. Thus,
it was more profitable to export capital to underdeveloped countries monolingualism in the minority language in segregation
where wages were low than to import workers. As unemployment ams may make the children linguistically equal to their peers
I
214 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems 215
in the home country, within the context of the host country dam too. The terms 'semilingualism' and 'double semilin-
are being educated to be kept in the same weak position as ism' are, however, usually defined with reference to some
parents. They are unable to demand any rights, and are poten lized and rather narrow notion of 'full competence' in one
ready to be sent back. or another. Individuals are said to be semilingual, for
Monolingualism in the majority language by submersion ,if they have a smaller vocabulary, compared with mono-
grams prevents the children from goingback and tries to assim
them to the dominant culture. Given the different status and d. In addition, the serriilingual can be expected to deviate
function of minorities in Germany and Sweden, different polici e norm in the two languages.
for education prevail. It is not surprising therefore to find th we see a number of basic misconceptions about the nature
German and Swedish researchers do not agree on what the be guage and about what constitutes competence in a language,
educational strategy for these children is. In Scandinavia it have been applied specifically to bilinguals. Linguistic
recommended that immigrant children should be taught throug rice has been conceptualized in terms of an implicit
their home language with the majority lmguage as a s~con r metaphor: a container which can be either 'full1 or
language. Researchers, along with the minority groups themselve full'. From the perspective of the history of science, it is
are opposed to putting children directly into the normal majorit haps not surprising that the container metaphor should be
classes. In Germany, however, many researchers recornmen ed to notions of linguistic competence since the container
rapid integration into the German classes and are opposed t phor is a basic one in the human conceptual system. ~t has
native-language instruction. The minority groups themselves are a dominant mode of conceptualizing human intellectual
divided in their opinion. In Berlin, for example, Turkish Parents es in other scientificfieldsas well. One needs only to think
want instruction for their children in German from the beginning ometry, i.e. the measure of brain size and volume, as a
of primary school onwards, while Greeks prefer their children to example of the literal application of the metaphor: 'the mind
be taught for the first years in Greek only. The attitudes of
different minority groups towsrds mother-tongue teaching and ted in the brain and the brain is the center of intelligence, it
language maintenance reflect general views on cultural assimila- asY to see why some scientists in the nineteenth century
tion. In both Sweden and Germany, however, researchers believe leved that one could measure intelligence by measuring the
they are recommending what is best for the children under the me of the brain. $
present so&-political circumstances. The German researchers he controversies"toncerning craniometry were not confined
want to ensure non-segregation, and the only way to do that in the to the more academic journals. They became a subject of
German system is to send the children to ordinary German classes. terest in the popular press, particularly when the results were
I sed to prove that the alleged inferiority of some racial groups,
women too, was genetically determined. The work of anthro-
Semilingualism: a new deficit theory
I gists was influential in dismissing cranial indices as measures
1
In Sweden policy has been partly influencedby some controversial mental worth by showing that they varied widely both amongI
research findings concerning 'semilingualism'. This term has been ults of a single group and within the life of individuals.I
used to describe what some researchers believe to be the less thanI What craniometry was for the nineteenth century, intelligence
complete linguistic skills of some bilinguals. From a historical and ting has become for the twentieth. The misuse of mental testsI
political perspective, it is significant that the term has emerged in not inherent in the idea of testing itself, but arises largely
connection with the study of the language skills of ethnic minorities. rot[& the fallacy of reification. Craniometry was based on the
The term has since become widely used in the Canadian debateI usion that a measure of what filled the cranial space told us
I
I about bilingualism, and it has become more popular in the United omething of the value of the contents. IQ testing can be thought
216 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems 217
of as a more sophisticated attempt to reify the containe of use. This is a highly questionable
Although the measures it relies on are consid
some of the surface features of language
here is an inverse relationship between
aware of this, the results of IQ testing have b and assessed quantitatively and its
particularly in the case of minority language groups. municative skills. More visible and
We see too the container metaphor interacting h as pronunciation and vocabulary,
metaphor so that the idea is fostered that there is ed throughout a child's school career
between form and content. We expect that more of form equ regard for their interrelationship with other levels of
more of content. Linguistic expressions are seen as containers a c organization. These features tend to be the ones that are
their meanings are the contents of those containers. The containe ured, rather because we think we know what they are and
metaphor becomes problematic when it is translated into measur is easier to delimit than because of what they tell
developed by the testing industry. When notions like the 'abili learning and development. Often children's pro-
to extract meaning' become operationalized as score ally by comparing scores obtained on
reading tests, a child who fails is then labelled as o ilar tests from year to year. This practice assumes
'unable to extract meaning'. Similarly, when the cognitive aspects feature measures something meaningful at one
of language are tested in terms of being able to produce synonyms continues to do so. It has, however, been shown that this
or create new words, the child who can't is branded as 'lacking eading, a skill which is essential for
in the cognitive aspects of language development'. Then it be- ifferent levels of language take on significanceat
comes easy to believe that abstract, and usually quantitative, of learning how to read.
measures, such as size of vocabulary, response time, etc., must semilingual, it is not easy to locate
in Chapter 2 that where bilingualism
tal or individual level, the two languages are
syntax, accurate spelling and punctuation, etc., become establish ntiated and coexist in a diglossic relationship.
measures of language proficiency, it is hardly questioned what he same competence does not develop in both
actually meant by language ability and what role these features ies, although together they bear the same
e language does in a monolingual community.
of the research on bilingualism, the notion of balanced
competent language user, as I have already shown. ever, functioned as an implicit synonym for
Many minority students can develop communicativ ilingualism. It has been used as a yardstick
new language within two years, while lagging behind in other areas ds of bilingualism have been measured and
of proficiency, which might take up to seven years to develop to nderdeveloped. Much of this termi-
the appropriate level attained by monolingual students. Part of 1 bias of a linguistic theory which has
the reason why conversational skills are acquired more easily is ily with the idealized competence of mono-
that they are context-embedded. Children learn these aspects of peech communities of western Europe and
language through interaction with peers. The kind of knowledge unities which, on the whole, have a high
required to do well on tests is considerably more abstract and is tonomy, and also possess highly codified
learned largely through classroom instruction. Most testing instru- rescriptive traditions.
ments rely on the assumption that it is possible to separate ingual' also reveals a static conception
analytically different aspects of language language. Where languages are in contact, there is usually
218 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems
considerable intergenerational variation in patterns of language
use and often quite rapid change in communicative repertoires.
We can see how notions like 'half', 'full', etc. rely on some sort of
assessment procedure. At this stage, however, there is no general
agreement among child language researchers about the 'normal'
course of development among monolingual, let alone bilingual
children. Most of the studies of both groups focus on the middle-
class child. Although it could be argued that some language
contact phenomena reflect the consequences of incomplete language
acquisition, it is impossible to define the notion of complete
acquisition. If we assumed that complete acquisition included
knowledge of the monolingual standard variety, then the Spanish
of second- and third-generation bilinguals in California would
have to be considered an incompletely acquired variety, in spite
of the fact that these speakers are able to communicate fluently in
Spanish in all the domains where they are expected to use the
language. One could not test the competence of these speakers by
measuring their control over the categories and rules of the
monolingual code, some of which do not exist in their own speech.
A realistic assessment of bilinguals must be based firmly on a
knowledge of developmental norms for the two language?, and
typical patterns of interference as well as patterns of socialization.
The social and linguistic consequences of using two or more
languages for different functions are not the same everywhere.
Communicative competence is differentially shaped in relation to
patterns of language use, as well as community attitudes and
beliefs about competence. Certain types of bilingualism can become
'problematic' when a society perceives certain complexes of skills
as 'inadequate' or 'inappropriate' relative to the things that have
to be done and the conventionalized linguistic means for doing so.
Clearly the notion of language proficiency needs to be defined in
such a way SO as to allow us to look at the productive skills of
bilingual children as strategic accomplishments in performance
rather than as deficits in competence.
We must ask what goals different societies have when they try
to make various children bilingual or monolingual (see Chapter
2). Often children are caught in a vicious circle. Because the
school fails to support the home language, skills in it are often
poor. At the same time they do not progress in the new language
at school, and are labeled semilingual. Often it is argued that
Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems 219
bilingualism impedes development in the second language. Thus,
the failure of the school to let children develop further in their
mother tongue is often used to legitimize further oppression of it.
We have seen that the term 'bilingual education' can mean
different things in different contexts. If we take a common-sense
approach and define it as a program where two languages are used
equally as media of instruction, many so-called bilingual education
programs would not count as such. Moreover, the 'same' educational
policy can lead to different outcomes, depending on differences in
the input variables. The traditional policy, either implicitly assumed
or explicitly stated, which most nations have pursued with regard
to various minority groups, who speak a different language, has
been eradication of the native language/culture and assimilation
into the majority one. This is still the most common experience
for minority children. An example would be the Romanies in
Finland, whose children are placed in ordinary Finnish schools
without any consideration for the Romany language or culture.
There is no attempt to provide any mother-tongue teaching or
extra teaching in Finnish. Often the education of these children
entails removing them from their parents and their own cultural
group-
Proponents of maintenance programs have certain social and. -political assumptions about the value of cultural duralism and the
negative aspects of enforced assimilation. They rest on the view
that the right to one's own language is a basic human right.
$
Annotated bibliograph$:"
The epigraph to this chapter is taken from Ralph Grillo's book Dominant
Languages: Language and Hierarchy in Britain and France (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989).
For discussion of minority education issues in Canada, see Jim Cummins,
Bilingualism and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy
(Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters, 1984).
One of the most important articles demonstrating the grammaticality
of Black English is William Labov's 'The Logicof Non-Standard English',
in Language in the Inner City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1972), 201-40.
Thc examples of restricted and elaborated code were taken from P. R.
Hawkins's paper 'Social Class, the Nominal Group and Reference', in
Basil Bernstein (ed.), Class, Codes and Control, 2. Apptied Studies
220 Linguistic Problems as Societal Problems
towards a Sociology of Language (London: Routledge and Kegan Pa
1973), 81-92.
Kenji Hakuta's Mirror of Language: The Debate on Biling~lalisrn(N
Yo&: Basic Books, 1986) and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas's Bilingualism
- 8 -
~ o t :The Education of Minorities (Clevedon, Avon: Multilingu
1984)provide good overviewsof the political implications of bi
A critical review of semilingualism can be found in C O ~ C ~ U S ~ O ~ S
Jones and Suzanne Romaine's article 'Semilingualism
Theory of Communicative Competence', Applied Ling
105-17.
The study of sharing time is in Sarah Michaels's article 'Sha WITHINthe perspective adopted in this book I have claimed that
Children's Narrative Styles and Differential Access to Literacy'
xistence apart from the social reality of its users. --
in Society, 10 (1981), 42343. ageis a precondifi~fi-i-~Ci~~-lif~;~ifd~e~~~^ -- ,
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's book Metaphors We Live n its own and it does not simply reflect some pre-existing reality.I -%=ai I
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) shows how m have tried to show how social and linguistic knowledge are "
influenceshuman conceptual processes. king at some of the various ways in which social
StephenJ. Gouid's book The Mismeasurement of Man ( coded in speakers' choices both of variants
Penguin, 1981) discusses some of the misconceptions behin thought of as one language as well as between
The Roadville and Trackton study is found in Shirley Brice Heath'
book Ways with Words (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1983). in my Preface that sociolinguistics lacked a con-
Sociolinguists are also actively engaged in the problems arising from _ __-.--%-------
retical model within wMc3 to situate and explain=-
the use of language in professions such as medicine and law. Peter
Trudgill's collectionApplied Sociolinguistics (NewYork: ~cademicPress,
hilE3~iolinj$ids -hivZ -&own the -importance of
1984) surveys some of the applications of sociolinguistic research to ty and developed powerful statistical methods for
communicative problems in society, and Robert Di Pietro's collection e critics have claimed that they have not really
Lingrlistics and the Professions (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1982) examines t. There has been some confusion in sociolinguistic
communication in professional settings. There are also many other discussions about what it means to explain something, as well as
specialist volumes concerning particular areas such as language in the about cause and effyct. This is particularly true in studies making
I
courtroom, as in William M. O'Barr's book Ling~listicEvidence: Language, use of quantitative analysis which establishes correlations between
Power and Strategy in the Court~oom(New York: Academic Press, 1982)I certain social and linguistic variables. In fact, it is almost paradoxical
and language in the deaf community, as in Ceil LUC~S'Scollection The
1 Sociolinguistics of the Deaf Community (New York: Academic Press,
that for many this kind of work (discussed in Chapter 3) is
synonymous with sociolinguistics because in many cases once a
1 1989). ech data has been obtained from a group of speakers
I particular social categories, the emphasis is sub-
ntirely on quantifymg, formalizing, and analyzingI
es. The social categories such as class, gender,
en and the social context which motivated the
ata in the first place is often lost sight of in the final
product. Within such statistical studies it is often easy to forget
// that speakers create and interpret language rather than merely
I
respond passively to variables such as style, social class membership,