ABSTRACT

Language is so fundamental to what it means to be human, so central to the forging of relationships, to the construction of national identity and to the communication of cultural identities that it is perhaps not surprising that language, specifically grammar and Standard English, remains a perennial source of heated debate. Language allows us to express the most sophisticated of intellectual ideas and the most deeply felt personal emotions; language allows us to share the past and to speculate about the future; language allows us to create new ideas and generate new possibilities. And in every generation, there have been ‘language mavens’ (Pinker 1994: 373) who have deemed it their responsibility to rail against the pervading social influences which lead to the perceived degradation of language, from Thomas Wilson’s (1553) cry against ‘outlandish English’ to the Queen’s English Society (QES), established in 1972 by Oxford graduate Joe Clifton, who deplored ‘the current decline in standards of English’ (www.queens-english-society. com/about.html). Language matters. It was, therefore, no accident and no surprise that in 1988 when the first National Curriculum for English was being shaped arguments about language were at the forefront of the debate. Marenbon (1987) argued that teachers who allowed ‘casual speech and non-standard dialects to predominate in their classrooms’ (1987: 36) threatened the very fabric of nationhood, because, as he claimed, ‘in the future of its language, there lies the future of a nation!’ (1987: 40).