ABSTRACT
Over the last 30 years or so (and for maybe much longer before that), three very general perspectives have been highly influential in attempts to account for inequalities in the distribution of knowledge, influence and resources within stratified societies. The first perspective, ‘the deficit position’, stresses the inadequacies of subordinate (out)groups and the importance of their being socialised into dominant (in)group norms. The second, with difference as its key word, emphasises the integrity and autonomy of the language and culture of subordinate groups, and the need for institutions to be hospitable to diversity. In the third, the focus shifts to larger structures of domination, and the need is stressed for institutions to combat the institutional processes and ideologies that reproduce the oppression of subordinate groups. There is obviously a lot of conflict between these interpretations of the basic character of inequality, and different perspectives have gained ascendency at different times in different places. In the debates about race and ethnicity in British education, they are fairly easily recognised as assimilation, multiculturalism and antiracism (Brandt 1986), and in discussions about the global spread of English, they are broadly in line with the views expressed in Quirk (1990), Kachru (1982) and Phillipson (1992) respectively.
