Level 5 Diploma for Teachers of English/ESOL

Standard English and Power

John Keenan - j.keenan@worc.ac.uk

crash

Educating Rita

Received pronunciation

Fawlty towers

accent

Pedagogy for English

•Standard English is a dialect – privileged one•Other dialects are just as valid•It changes over time•It contains ideology

Class

Region

Ethnicity

Gender

Identity-groups help determine education success

Class and Gender

Around 50% of low achievers are white British males

Boys are 30% more likely to be low achievers as girls

http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/2095.asp

Gender

http://www.poverty.org.uk/15/index.shtml?2

Ethnicity

Some say life is like a game and it is - some start on 1 and others on six and some have to throw a six before they start and they’ve lost alreadyThe rich get richer and the poor get children

Society is not fair

Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right - I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.

Timothy Winters

The Choosing

Ideology

Discourse

Labelling

Ideology?

Norms and values

Contained in a culture (trapped in time and space)

a way of seeing ‘reality’

Gives power to some and takes from others.

Language Contains Ideology

Roland Barthes

Myth

Mythology (1972)

‘the unnatural made natural’

labels ‘reality’

What is ‘normal’

What is ‘normal’

What is ‘normal’

What is ‘normal’

What is ‘normal’

What is ‘normal’

What is ‘normal’

‘Ideology is how the existing ensemble of social relations represents itself to individuals; it is the image a society gives of itself in order to perpetuate itself. These representations serve to constrain us … they establish fixed places for us to occupy’

Bill Nichols Ideology and the Image (1981) Indiana University Press p.1

‘Ideology operates as a constraint, limiting us to certain places or positions’

Nichols p.1

The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And ordered their estate

Ideology is in stories

The prince is a figment of our boring legend, he is the gravity her sleep-ship may escape from. Dressed in a red shift, she’s always a world ahead of his weight

Dorman, 1978: 55

Texts are not transparent objects; they are highly coercive linguistic strategies, positioning readers in particular ways which have nothing to do with encouraging individuality and everything to do with reproducing a particular social formation’

Cranny Francis, 1993: p.98

We are ‘adorned in dreams’

Elizabeth Wilson

Ideology and Dress Expectation

LOVE/SEX DANGER

HOTSTOP

blue

powerful

freedom

pink

soft

red - love

Ideology is expressed in language

Gender activity : crash

Gender activity: jobs

Dale Spender

Discourse

Michel Foucault

Discourse

THE POSITIONS TO WHICH WE ARE SUMMONED

genderethnicity

classage group

The discourse is always chosen - played with…

BUT

...if we refuse the expected discourse we will be outside of society

Teen Discourse Challenge

Place these into a sentence:

Cotch

Dope

Munch

Teens of Yesterday Discourse

What can be learnt from Jackie about the female teen of the 70s?

Words

Clothes

Hair

Attitude

Body language

Why Does Jeezy?

Foucault and Discourse

2 blokes in a pub discourse

Camp discourse

Girls’ night-out discourse

Teenage girls’ discourse

Footballer’s discourse

Police discourse

EG

BORN MALE

AGE-25-35

WORKING CLASS

NORTHERN

John Smiths

interpellationLouis Althusser

Stereotyping

‘A stereotype is the product of social construction, growing from group relations; an individual is assigned to a group and the supposed attributes of that group are applied to that individual’

Stuart Price, The Complete Media and Communication Handbook, 1997, London: Hodder and Stoughton, p.219

We stereotype ourselves by acting in discourses

One is not born a woman but rather becomes oneSimone de Beauvoir

‘Guys have been cheated by this society…the fact that men are supposed to be stiff…they have to show their armoured self to the world all the time. Having to do that hurts them as much as it hurts everyone else’Susan Faludi, 1999, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modern Man, London: Chatto and Windus, cited in Gauntlett, 2002, Media Gender and Identity, London: Routledge, p.4

Who is ‘black’?

Ideology and Labelling

EVILDEATH

TROUBLE BAD

I waz whitemailedBy a white witch,Wid white magicAn white lies,Branded a white sheepI slaved as a whitesmithNear a white spotWhere I suffered whitewater fever.Whitelisted as a whitelegI waz in de white bookAs a master of white art,It waz like white death.

People called me white jackSome hailed me as a white wog,So I joined de white watchTrained as a white guardLived off the white economy.Caught and beaten by de whiteshirtsI waz condemned to a white mass,Don’t worry,I shall be writing to de Black House.

— Benjamin Zephaniah (1958 - )

Labelling in Education

What can we do?

Ideology and Labelling

A soul as black as coal

Labelling in EducationIdeology and Labelling

Demystifying Myths 1

roast beef & Yorkshire pudding = British

Afghanistan

ItalyYorkshire

Mainland Europe

Americas

Solutions

Demystifying Myths 2

a cup of tea = English

Solutions

Demystifying Myths 3: blondes are dumb

Solutions

•Awareness (demystification) can change and this changes the power-base

•No privileged discourses - ‘pluricultural’

•Move from teacher-awareness to student awareness of the issue:

http://www.ricw.ri.gov/publications/GEH/college.htm

Solutions

100% English