<div>This goes back even further, I think; Bourdieu shows how when public education finally got going on a national scale in the 1880's, the goal of teachers became one of replacing patois (which was an inherently deficient linguistic system) with standard French, so that the famous 'lucidity, clarity and logic" of the French language could then restructure the minds of young French persons.
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<div>I quote from an article of mine on the subject:</div>
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<div>"<strong>Bourdieu and Whorf</strong>: It is also interesting to note that Bourdieu specifically discerns a kind of folk-Whorfian (Mertz 1982) world-view at work in the imposition and functioning of this model. Teachers in French schools are on the front lines, as it were, working constantly to ``inculcate a clear faculty of expression and of each emotion,"
i.e. through language. They work to replace the <i>patois</i>, which is nothing but a jumble of confusion, with standard French, itself the only ``clear and fixed" thing that deserves to be in their heads, and trying to get them to perceive and feel things in the same way. The work of the teacher is ``to erect the common conscience of the nation." Bourdieu calls this a Whorfian or Humboldtian theory of language, which sees scholarly action as ``intellectual and moral integration." (Bourdieu
<i>op cit.</i>p.32.) Teaching language, therefore, is a kind of mind control;' instilling the standard language in the heads of children will reprogram them to think clearly."</div>
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<div>(From a paper entitled "French Language Policy: Centrism, Orwellian dirigisme, or Economic Determinism?" in a volume edited by Li Wei, Jean-Marc Dewaele, and Alex Housen, entitled <i>Opportunities and Challenges of Bilingualism.
</i> published in <i>Contributions to the Sociology of Language.(87)</i> 2002, pp. 89-104. On-line at: <br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/french/dirigism/DIRIGISM.html">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/french/dirigism/DIRIGISM.html
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<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/25/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Dennis Baron</b> <<a href="mailto:debaron@uiuc.edu">debaron@uiuc.edu</a>> wrote:</span></div>
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<div style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">This goes back -- in the linguistic literature -- at least to the 1960s with the work of Engelmann and Bereiter on the language of disadvantaged African-American children in preschool (?headstart) programs in Urbana IL -- as I recall, that report claimed that these four year olds came to school with no language at all, and it was what Labov was reacting against in "The Logic of Nonstandard English" and his 1966 report on language in the inner city.
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<div>Dennis
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<div>On Jul 25, 2007, at 12:00 PM, Anthea Fraser Gupta wrote:</div><br>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">On 7/25/07 12:19 PM, "Anthea Fraser Gupta" <<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:A.F.Gupta@leeds.ac.uk" target="_blank">
A.F.Gupta@leeds.ac.uk</a>> wrote:<br><br></font></span>
<blockquote><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"><font face="Arial">Can anyone explain why all this literature refers to 'language acquisition' <br>and not to 'the learning of Standard English'? Using 'language acquisition
<br>makes it sound as if children are coming to school without any language!<br></font><font face="Times New Roman"><br></font></span></blockquote><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"><span>Ron wrote "</span>And that's exactly what the dominant US folk ideology assumes about the
<br>language of African Americans.<span>"</span><br></span></font></div>
<div><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Exactly -- is anyone challenging the terminology? </font></span></div>
<div><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Anthea</font></span></div><br>
<p><font size="2">* * * * *<br>Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)<br>School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT <<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg" target="_blank">
www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg</a>><br>NB: Reply to <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:a.f.gupta@leeds.ac.uk" target="_blank">a.f.gupta@leeds.ac.uk</a><br>* * * * *
<br> </font> </p>
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<div lang="en-us" dir="ltr" align="left">
<hr>
<font face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b> <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:owner-lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu" target="_blank">owner-lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu</a> [<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:owner-lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu" target="_blank">
mailto:owner-lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Ronald Kephart<br><b>Sent:</b> 25 July 2007 17:22<br><b>To:</b> <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu" target="_blank">
lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu</a><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: Ebonics: The Subject Still Stirs Strong Feelings<br></font><br> </div>
<div></div><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"><font face="Arial"><br>Ron<br><br></font></span></blockquote><font face="Arial"></font></div><br> </div></span></div></div></div></blockquote><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
<br><br>Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br>Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475
<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/
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