The Nine Lives of "Linguistic Deficiency"

[phaney at mail.utexas.edu]

People interested in the relationship between language and social inequality as
well as those interested in language socialization, should check out an article
in today's New York Times on preschools in Oklahoma.  The article highlights an
interesting feature of the current political landscape.  Although the elite in
the U.S. has generally been pulling the state away from providing social
services, there is a faction that is solidly behind early education.  In
relatively "conservative" (whatever that means) Oklahoma, according to this 
article, there is government-funded preschool for all starting at the age of
four.

The "money" passage for those interested in the social life of language is here:
____________
This combination of quality and scale makes the Oklahoma program one of the most
serious attempts to deal with economic inequality anywhere in the country. Long
before children turn 5, there are already enormous gaps in their abilities. One
study found that 3-year-olds with professional parents know about 1,100 words on
average, while 3-year-olds whose parents are on welfare know only 525. Much of
the gap is caused by environment rather than genes, according to a wide body of
research.
____________

Well that (environment, not genes), at least, is a relief.  The online editionof
the story links to an excerpt from a 1995 book by Profs. Betty Hart (Human
Development, U Kansas) and Todd Risley (Psychology, U Alaska) reproduced by the
American Federation of Teachers.  This (old) study sought to quantify the verbal
input that kids in four different socioeconomic strata got over a two year
period.  Researchers observed and recorded kids' interactions with their
parents in the home for an hour per month.  They found that upper- and
middle-class kids had larger vocabularies, experienced more verbal interactions
with parents, and enjoyed more encouraging feedback than working-class kids and
kids "on welfare."  The Times didn't seek input from critics of the "culture of
poverty as linguistic deficiency" thesis or those who wonder if "more words" are
really always better.

The newspaper article is here:
(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/education/07leonhardt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

The excerpt from the Hart/Risley book is here:
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/spring2003/catastrophe.html