Vernacular Language

Varieties in Educational
Settings: Research and
Development

Discussant: Mary Joy P. Dizon
VERNACULAR LANGUAGE

The word vernacular
originates from the
Latin word,
vernāculus, meaning
native or indigenous. 
 
The term "vernacular
language" refers to the
native language of a specific
language in a specific place.
 
During the Roman Empire, non-
natives from different parts of the
world spoke Latin because they
could not learn each of the many
languages that the natives spoke in
the empire.
 Key Differences Between A
Vernacular Language And A Lingua
Franca

Unlike vernacular, a lingua franca (vehicular
languages) is a language used when people
speaking different vernacular dialects want to
communicate with each other.
The use of a lingua franca to represent a language
can be traced to the mid-1600s. The development
and spread of a lingua franca provide economic,
political, and social communication convenience. 
 
Vernacular language usually
represents a community’s native
language while a lingua franca
often has a widespread use,
beyond borders of the original
community.
 Standard Language

A language variety that has undergone
substantial codification of grammar and
usage, and is employed by a population for
public communication.
The term standard language occasionally
refers to the entirety of a language that
includes a standardized form as one of its
varieties.
 
The standardization of a
language is a continual process,
because a language-in-use
cannot be permanently
standardized like the parts of a
machine.
 Standardization process
includes:

1. Efforts to stabilize the spelling of the
prestige dialect,
2. To codify usages and particular (
denotative) meanings through formal 
grammars and dictionaries,
3. To encourage public acceptance of the
codifications as intrinsically correct.
Vernacular Language
Varieties in
Educational
Settings: Research and
Development
 
The need to understand
why African American
students have not fared as
well academically as other
groups have.
Sociolinguistic research on
oral language development

A long-term program of research
conducted by Holly Craig and Julie
Washington and their colleagues
investigating language development in
children who speak African American
English, and its implications for school
performance.
 Sociolinguistic research on
oral language development

Among the questions addressed in
this research program were
whether, why, and how African
American children who speak
African American English as a first
dialect acquire Standard American
English.
 
Researchers found systematic
variation according to grade level:
across the grades, African
American English-speaking
children increasingly adopted the
Standard American English that is
associated with schooling.
 
Vernacular features occurred
more often at school entry in
boys and in children from
lower-income homes, these
effects disappeared across the
grades.
 
The suggestion is that it is not the
initial language variety that
students bring to school that causes
problems, but rather institutional
responses to these varieties that
ultimately lead to academic failure.
Sociolinguistic research
on reading

For many years, African American students
have scored poorly in reading on the
National Assessment of Educational Progress
in comparison to other groups.
 A number of explanations for this persistent
gap have been advanced, and language
issues are prominent among them
 Two hypotheses have
been proposed.

The interference hypothesis
predicts that vernacular speakers
occasionally misunderstand the
language of the text because it is
closer to spoken Standard
American English than to their
own dialect.
 Two hypotheses have
been proposed.

The influence hypothesis, on the other
hand, predicts that children’s oral
reading will include vernacular
substitutions for Standard American
English features, especially
phonological ones
 
A process for estimating whether a
vernacular substitution is a case of
interference (i.e., a reading error) or a
case of dialect influence was developed
in connection with Labov and his
colleagues’ research program on
reading and vernacular dialects
 
This study found that certain
vernacular substitutions were more
likely than others to be reading
errors. For example, the frequency
of omitting third person verbal {s}
in speech correlated with dialect
influence in reading:
 
Charity, Scarborough, and Griffin (2004)
note that while the mismatch between
written and spoken English makes
learning to read challenging for young
children in general, it is even more
challenging for speakers of vernacular
dialects, who are less likely to find
predictable features of their dialects
represented in print.
 
The results of this study support
the view that African American
children may have more difficulty
in learning to read for reasons of
dialect difference, and they raise
interesting questions for further
research.
 Sociolinguistic research
on vernacular writing

 Several studies of students from the Caribbean detail
the difficulties they encounter at school for reasons
of linguistic and cultural contrasts (e.g., Coelho, 1991,
but the extent of these difficulties and their nature is
not well understood.
 
Schools have not
educated children from
other English-speaking
regions appropriately.
 
Out of this effort came a study
of writing, the modality in
which language differences had
the greatest effect on students’
school success, according to the
survey.
 
Analysis focused on the
grammatical structures for
which deviation from
standard American written
English occurred most
frequently.


 
De Kleine (2006) recommends
explicit instruction in Standard
American English, using
contrastive analysis: comparing the
grammatical patterns of vernacular
or creole varieties to those of
standard English.
 Application of Sociolinguistic
Research on
Vernacular Dialects in Education

Hudson (2004: 105) has argued
that “One of the fundamental
questions on which we
linguists disagree is whether or
not our subject is useful for
education.”
 
Few sociolinguists participate in
education research on language-
related issues, and fewer still have
first hand experience in schools,
working as or with teachers and
administrators
 
Further, linguistic outreach to
education, which has the
potential to benefit schools in
dramatic ways, may not benefit
the sociolinguist to the same
extent.
 
Extending the findings of
dialect research to education
remains an important
obligation for researchers
(Labov, 1982; Wolfram, 1993).
 
The challenge in this case
is likely to involve
reaching two audiences –
teachers and their
students.
 
Dialect discrimination remains
endemic in educational and social
systems because, as Fairclough (2001)
notes, language ideology is largely
invisible, which is a result of relatively
few people recognizing the fact that
language can and must be studied
scientifically.
 
One of the first steps to any
educational outreach project about
language must be to convince teachers
that language can be studied
scientifically and that doing so is
beneficial to the social and academic
well-being of students.
 
There is not a robust
tradition of scientific
study of language in
schools.
 Wolfram and Schilling-Estes
(2006: 7–8) outline six
commonly held myths:
1. the notion that there are some
people who do not speak a dialect
2. that “dialects always have
highly noticeable features that set
them apart”
3. that dialects are only spoken by
socially disfavored groups
Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (2006:
7–8) outline six commonly held
myths:

4. that dialects are the result of
unsuccessful (or incomplete) learning
of the standard language;
5. that dialects are not patterned;
6. that all dialects carry negative social
connotations (or are simply “bad
language”)
 Dialect awareness
curricula

Discovery learning is far more effective
than lecture in effecting long-lasting
changes in perceptions and knowledge
(Bligh, 2000).
It becomes apparent that dialect diversity
reflects the richness of the human
condition and that it is worthy of
admiration instead of condemnation.
 
Students look at examples of
language change over time and
discuss the possibility that
dialect differences represent
change in progress.
Teaching code-switching

Students learn to apply the
“formal” or “academic”
English rule, owner + ’s +
owned, to produce the
Standard English sentence,
that is the dog’s bowl.
 
The result might help students
learn the academic English forms
they need to succeed in school, as
well as accurate perceptions of
language variation and respect for
vernacular English dialects and
their speakers
Applied reading research

Labov and his colleagues
have developed a
program to help raise the
reading levels of minority
children in Philadelphia.
 
The results from an early piloting of
the program are encouraging (Labov
&Baker, 2001).
Twenty-nine children in grades 2–5
who were at least one grade behind in
reading level participated in this
program.
Applying dialect research to
speech/language services

One of these is the Michigan
Protocol for African American
Language that was developed
with the research program
discussed above (Craig &
Washington, 2006).
 Conclusion

Critique of traditional models of
teaching language arts and recognition
of the need for teaching materials on
dialect awareness (e.g., Carpenter,
Baker, & Scott, 1908; Marckwardt, 1966)
predates the proliferation of
sociolinguistic research on language
variation from the 1960s and 1970s.
 
Materials on language
varieties have become
developed for
educational audiences.
 
It appears that now more than ever there is
sincere interest on the part of linguists in the
US and around the world in working
collaboratively with educators to produce
materials that help teachers with the
language-related problems they perceive and
to introduce ideas and information about
language that they would not have
encountered otherwise.
THANK YOU!
