‘Addressing’ language deficit: valuing children's variational repertories

Abstract

There is growing evidence that student contributions via classroom talk (oracy) are subject to social judgements premised on cultural evaluation of accent and dialect, with particular varieties often viewed in deficit terms and pathologised, both within and beyond the classroom. We reflect on a university–community project involving researchers working to support Greythorpe Junior School (‘pseudonymised’) to address the linguistic deficit position that a school inspection report had taken in relation to the use of local varieties of English in Greythorpe. The researchers used socio-linguistic frames (repertoire, accommodation and discourse attuning) to develop productive strategies for students and the school to take ownership of how to negotiate perspectives that diminish non-standard accents and dialects. We provide illustrations of the workshop conversations with children and teachers to highlight the sophisticated, lived, metalinguistic understandings of children and teachers in the school, through which this perception of language deficit was ultimately renegotiated. In illustrating this case, we draw into focus the ways in which academic, institutional, socio-linguistic knowledge is (by its descriptive nature) divorced from context and so is only of use if it can be owned by those who are facing linguistic inequalities.