ABSTRACT
As I explain in the Introduction to this book, I was drawn into the study of language in school through my experiences as a child; and this is reflected in the contents of this piece, which I wrote with Janet Maybin not very long after I had joined her at the Open University. Despite it being written almost three decades ago, I am sorry to say that misconceptions and prejudices about the relationship between the languages of school and community, as discussed in this article, are still rife (in the UK at least). Just a month before writing this, I read in the national British press that some teachers with northern accents (like my own) were being told by their managers that they ought to ‘lose’ them in the interests of professional development.
