Sunday, November 17, 2013

Teacher told to "lose her northern accent"

Following on from Friday's post about another attempt to 'ban' students from using dialect and non-standard terms (and/or slang, depending on your definition of the term), another story - this time about accent - has appeared.

According to The Cumberland News and Star, a Cumbrian teacher has been told to ditch her regional accent and make it more 'southern' to suit her Berkshire pupils. Now it appears that it's not just students who are having their language policed, but teachers are also being told what to say and how to say it. Where will the language police strike next?

Back in 2010, Ofsted raised a similar issue at a school in Portsmouth which prompted this blog post and this response in the TES, among other things.

Black British English vs MLE

The latest episode of Lexis is out and it features an interview with Ife Thompson about lots of issues connected to Black British English, i...