Where words collide: social class, schools and linguistic discontinuity

Ruairc, Gerry Mac

doi:10.1080/01425692.2011.578437

Cited by 15 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…However, the 15% of pupils who do not agree with the correction of non‐standard varieties should also be noted. These pupils are perhaps more in line with the children in Mac Ruairc's ( and 2011b) studies who disliked the school's efforts to promote the standard dialect.…”

Section: Bourdieu Language and Powermentioning

confidence: 63%

“…Unsurprisingly, such oppression and derision can result in rebellion and resentment towards school. Many of the children in studies by Mac Ruairc ( and 2011b) expressed strong anti‐school sentiments, which in part derived from their anger at the school's attempt to enforce a standardised language. Spencer et al () uncovered similar patterns in adolescent behaviour.…”

Section: Bourdieu Language and Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some pupils negotiate the language demands placed on them by constructing alternative identities that they can perform in different spheres of their lives. In Mac Ruairc's study (), the participants discussed having a ‘school mode’ that related to the hyper‐polite way in which they communicated with teachers (p. 545). They perceived ‘school language’, however, to be an artifice whereby they were performing an identity that did not correspond to their seemingly essentialised perception of their ‘real’ self.…”

Section: Bourdieu Language and Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dialect, power and politics: standard English and adolescent identities

Brady

2015

Literacy

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This paper examines the official requirement for the promotion of standard English using Bourdieu's concepts of the production and reproduction of legitimate language. It explores the political drive behind the demand for this standard dialect in England and, through a survey on the views of fifty-two 14 and 15 year olds, analyses the impact that this is having on adolescent identities in an inner-city London school. The students perceive non-standard English as a vehicle through which they can express their 'true' selves and construct a collective teenage identity. They use language to construct a division between themselves as teenagers and the adult 'others'. Although the students do not necessarily want to use non-standard English in the classroom, or with their teachers, educators need to consider how to afford pupils access to the 'official language', which grants privilege and power, without devaluing the identities which they may associate with other dialect forms. The final part of the paper explores the value of Cummin's concept of 'transformative pedagogy ' (2002) in relation to the study of dialect with adolescents.

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Section: Bourdieu Language and Powermentioning

confidence: 63%

Section: Bourdieu Language and Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Bourdieu Language and Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dialect, power and politics: standard English and adolescent identities

Brady

2015

Literacy

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“…This difference can lead to a lower level of oral language competence when assessed using standard measures and has implications for developing literacy skills, accessing the school curriculum and engaging with the school context and education system. Previous studies within an Irish context have documented the different style of language used by Irish children from lower SES backgrounds (Cregan 2007;MacRuairc 2011aMacRuairc , 2011b. The focus of the current study was on oral language competence.…”

Section: Current Studymentioning

confidence: 97%

An examination of the oral language competence of junior infant pupils attending DEIS and Non-DEIS schools

Molloy

Murtagh

McAvinue

2016

Irish Educational Studies

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“…Indeed, previous research has shown that individuals' use of language (Bernstein 1960;Bourdieu and Thompson 1991;Mac Ruairc 2011) and consumption of clothes (Hamilton 2012;Preston 2007) can serve to symbolically distinguish people in class terms (Bourdieu 1984). As Bourdieu argues 'social distances are inscribed in the body ' (1987, 5) and these bodily inscriptions seemed not only to be perceptible by students but also to inform their friendship networks.…”

Section: Network Reflexivity and Weak And Strong Tiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘When you see a normal person …’: social class and friendship networks among teenage students

Papapolydorou¹

2013

British Journal of Sociology of Education

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This paper draws on social capital theory to discuss the way social class plays out in the friendships of teenage students. Based on data from individual interviews and focus groups with 75 students in four London secondary schools, it is suggested that students tend to form friendships with people who belong to the same social-class background as them. Social-class 'sameness' is considered to be an element that importantly exemplifies the quality of their friendships, hence, close, inter-class friendships were significantly less common than close, intra-class ones. In addition, class differentials were evident and often reproduced by students, even in the context of the rarer inter-class friendships. This paper concludes that social class is of continuous importance in teenagers' lives and despite some agentic negotiation of class boundaries, as in the case of omnivorousness, students' friendship networks are dynamically informed by class inequalities.

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Where words collide: social class, schools and linguistic discontinuity

Cited by 15 publications

References 26 publications

Dialect, power and politics: standard English and adolescent identities

Dialect, power and politics: standard English and adolescent identities

An examination of the oral language competence of junior infant pupils attending DEIS and Non-DEIS schools

‘When you see a normal person …’: social class and friendship networks among teenage students

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