ABSTRACT
Throughout, we have seen the complexities of the relationships between language and the social contexts in which it is used, and we have therefore seen that any simple causal model purporting to relate superficial aspects of language directly to educational processes will be oversimple. ‘Superficial’ aspects of language include accent, grammatical differences between standard and nonstandard dialects, the proportion of grammatically complex sentences a speaker uses, and so on. There is no evidence whatsoever that such features of language are related, for example, to thought processes. We have also seen that certain concepts (such as restricted code and verbal deprivation), which are being taken for granted by many educationalists and psychologists, are being seriously questioned by linguists as having little or no basis in linguistic fact. We must therefore now try to reach some conclusions about the state of research in this area, and about what would constitute a sociolinguistically adequate statement of the role of language in education. These will be tentative conclusions, it is only since around 1970 that any concentrated amount of work has been done on the role of language in education. Much of the work has been done by psychologists and sociologists, and only comparatively recently have linguists begun to show an interest: Hymes (e.g. 1972) and Labov have led the way here.
