ABSTRACT
In learning a first language the child assumes active membership of society. Initially, of course, the child enters not society as a whole but a particular localized subgroup. In this respect, access to his/her first language is by way of a highly specific network of speakers who pass on to the child their own version of the language in question. The child, in effect, does not learn ‘a language’ whole and entire such as Urdu, Swahili, German or English: s/he learns a way of communicating with an immediate social group. For, just as there are extreme and obvious differences between one language and another – between, for example, English, Farsi (Persian), Gujarati, Urdu, Welsh, Croatian and German – there are also significant if less obvious differences within languages. Thus there are important distinctions between High and Low German or between British and American English. A child growing up somewhere in Britain does not necessarily learn a uniformly standard form of English as a first language. In the first place, it might not be English at all: it might be Welsh or Urdu or Panjabi. And, even if it is ‘English’, it may well be a very different English if learnt in parts of Liverpool, Glasgow, Oxford or Belfast.
