John Honey's Language Is Power
The fragment I will analyse is from John Honey’s book Language is Power: The Story of Standard English and Its Enemies. It is a contemporary text which deals with the controversies around the idea of having a Standard English. Honey is in favour of having a Standard English and that is what he claims in the book, along with opinions of other linguistics who are against that, as he calls them in the title ‘enemies’. In the fragment, Honey exposes the ideas of linguistics who are in favour; one of them is himself, and ideas of who are against this Standard English, such as the one of Alan Sinfield, along with the explanation of a situation lived by himself years before.
Honey starts establishing the controversy created around the idea of a Standard English in the last decade, claiming that the situation is a “battlefield”. He exposes …show more content…
He explains that when he was involved in teacher education, he was also a government inspector of schools, HMI. He cites that he followed the steps of Matthew Arnold, a writer who was also an inspector. Honey claims that in those times he knew about teachers who did not want to “require their pupils to use Standard English”. Those teachers saw Standard English as one of the dialects of English, and for them they were all “equally good”. In relation to this situation, the author makes a comment as if they do not want to teach it because it is like an act of oppression for them. Moreover, Honey gives the opinion of a literary critic, Alan Sinfield, with respect to this topic. Sinfield agrees with the posture of the teachers as he is against the proposal of the Conservative government´s National Curriculum of making the pupils undergo their test in Standard English. He even makes reference to the people who use this variant: “many white, middle-class people in the south west of England”, Sinfield
Honey starts establishing the controversy created around the idea of a Standard English in the last decade, claiming that the situation is a “battlefield”. He exposes …show more content…
He explains that when he was involved in teacher education, he was also a government inspector of schools, HMI. He cites that he followed the steps of Matthew Arnold, a writer who was also an inspector. Honey claims that in those times he knew about teachers who did not want to “require their pupils to use Standard English”. Those teachers saw Standard English as one of the dialects of English, and for them they were all “equally good”. In relation to this situation, the author makes a comment as if they do not want to teach it because it is like an act of oppression for them. Moreover, Honey gives the opinion of a literary critic, Alan Sinfield, with respect to this topic. Sinfield agrees with the posture of the teachers as he is against the proposal of the Conservative government´s National Curriculum of making the pupils undergo their test in Standard English. He even makes reference to the people who use this variant: “many white, middle-class people in the south west of England”, Sinfield