Critical language awareness part I: A critical review of three current approaches to language awareness

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Critical language awareness part I:A critical review of three currentapproaches to language awarenessRomy Clark a , Norman Fairclough a , Roz Ivanič a & Marilyn

Martin‐Jones a

a Department of Linguistics and Modem English Language ,Lancaster University , Lancaster, LA1 4YT, EnglandPublished online: 04 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Romy Clark , Norman Fairclough , Roz Ivanič & Marilyn Martin‐Jones(1990) Critical language awareness part I: A critical review of three current approaches tolanguage awareness, Language and Education, 4:4, 249-260

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CRITICAL LANGUAGE AWARENESS1

Part I: A Critical Review of Three CurrentApproaches to Language Awareness

Romy Clark, Norman Fairclough, Roz Ivanic and Marilyn Martin-Jones

Department of Linguistics and Modem English Language, Lancaster University,Lancaster LA1 4YT, England

Abstract. We assume that the development of a critical awareness of the worldought to be the main objective of all education, including language education.Language awareness programmes ought therefore to help children develop notonly operational and descriptive knowledge of the linguistic practices of theirworld, but also a critical awareness of how these practices are shaped by, andshape, social relationships and relationships of power.

In this, the first of a two-part paper, we show that a range of existing languageawareness proposals and materials are not 'critical' in this sense. On the contrary,with a few exceptions, they present the naturalised domain of linguistic practicesas a natural domain, a given and common sense reality whose social origins areout of sight. This is true for bilingual, dialectal and diatypic variation. Mostcurrent approaches to language awareness present the domain of linguistic prac-tices as a pluralistically harmonious domain; no attention is given to ideologicaldifferences or ideological struggles in language, and, in fact, the nexus oflanguage-power-ideology is ignored. Despite their admirable attempts to heightencross-cultural undertanding and harmony, they appear to underscore the legit-imacy of the already legitimated set of existing linguistic practices, and thereforeindirectly of the existing power relations which underpin these practices.

We end with a detailed critical evaluation of an extract from currently availablelanguage awareness teaching materials.

Introduction

The term 'language awareness' (LA) has recently come to identify an approachto language education which is founded upon conscious attention to properties oflanguage and language use. In Britain, the term is used to refer to moves in thatdirection which have taken place in the 1980s, though a rather similar approachwas advocated before the term became fashionable in Doughty et al. (1971) forinstance. We regard 'language awareness' as a development which should bewelcomed and strengthened. However, while there may be broad agreement uponthe value of LA work, there are differences about the content of LA programmesand materials, and about the relationship between LA and other elements of thelanguage education curriculum.

0790-8318/90/04/0249-12$02.50/0 © 1990 R. Clark et al.LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Vol. 4, No. 4, 1990

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250 LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

Our purpose in this two-part paper is to argue for a critical LA, and for LAto be closely linked to the development of learners' practical language capabilities.In this first part of the paper we offer a critical evaluation of three majorprogrammatic statements about LA: Committee for Linguistics in Education(CLIE) (1985), Hawkins (1984), and National Congress on Languages in Edu-cation (NCLE) (1985). In the case of the latter, we refer specifically to the Reportof the NCLE Working Party (NCLE, 1985). We refer also to the series of bookletswhich was published in association with Hawkins (1984), in particular Pomphrey(1985). Although there are differences among the three, they are sufficientlysimilar in respect of the issues which we shall focus upon to be grouped together.We are not aiming for a comprehensive review of LA publications, but a selectivecomparison between three salient publications and our own position.

In arguing for a critical LA, we are applying to language a general view of whatthe main objective of schooling ought to be: developing a critical awareness ofthe world, and of the possibilities for changing it. In the case of language, it isa matter of coming to see the existing practices of a given 'sociolinguistic order'as socially created within particular social relationships, and therefore sociallychangeable. In contrast, the three publications we refer to treat language practicesas just given: the sociolinguistic order is portrayed as a natural order rather thanan order which has become naturalised. These differences with respect to languageare, we shall suggest, linked to different conceptions of schooling, and to differentunderstandings of the motivations for and objectives of LA work. In critical LAthere is a dialectical relationship between the growth of critical awareness and thegrowth of language capabilities, with the latter being fed by the possibilities forchange opened up by the former. In the three publications we shall be lookingat, language awareness is seen as separate from language practice. This hascurricular consequences: LA tends to be seen as a separate component of thecurriculum, a view we strongly oppose.

These differences are summed up in Table 1, where the top row represents theposition of CLIE, Hawkins and NCLE, and the bottom row represents the criticalposition. These contrasts will be explained more fully below. In terms of classroom

Table 1 A comparison between language awareness and critical language awareness

Objectives

LA Socialintegration

CLA Socialemancipation

Motivations

Legitimationof social &soclingorder

Critique &change ofsocial &soclingorder

Schooling

Fittingchildreninto socialorder

Fittingchildrento work in& changesoc order

Language

Naturalorder

Naturalisedorder

Learning

Knowledgeisolatedfrompractice

Knowledgeintegratedwithpractice

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CRITICAL LANGUAGE AWARENESS 251

practice for a critical LA, we believe that there is ample good practice in existinglanguage education, and especially in some of the work being done by Englishlanguage teachers in multilingual classrooms. This naturally connects with acritical approach to LA, and, we feel that it is useful to make the connectionmore explicit.

We are conscious that, in advocating critical LA in the schools during the thirdTory administration and in the context of the 1987 Education Bill, we areswimming against the tide of educational policy. We do so because we believethat it is particularly important for critical perspectives not to be swampedduring this reactionary phase. We should stress however that this paper is arecommendation for longterm strategy whose immediate tactical value will belimited, at least in some situations. A more pressing tactical requirement, whichwe would certainly support, might now be to defend what has so far been achievedin language awareness work against modernised variants of the 'grammar grind'.

Explicit Objectives of Current Approaches to LA

In the NCLE document (1985:7), language awareness is defined as '. . . aperson's sensitivity to and conscious awareness of the nature of language and itsrole in human life'. Very few people would quarrel with this definition; theproblems arise, of course, when we begin to examine more closely what is meantby 'the nature of language' and the explanation of its 'role in human life'. Thethree texts we want to examine put forward very strong arguments in favour ofLA work. The authors perceive these arguments as a positive response to anumber of problems they identify relating to both schooling and society at large.In their view, the problems relate to the failure of schools to equip many children,particularly working class and ethnic minority children, to participate 'effectively'in the learning process at school and to be 'effective' members of a sociallyintegrated, racially tolerant and economically efficient society.

The responses to these educational and social problems are framed in terms ofthree main categories of objectives:

(1) to improve the communication skills of individual children;(2) to prepare for better social integration;(3) to coordinate work on language in the schools more clearly, on a local and

national basis.

1. To improve communication skills

This objective has four aspects:

(a) development of the study skills seen as essential for the learning of standardEnglish, for foreign language learning and for other subjects;

(b) improving the literacy skills of the verbally less able and bridging the gapbetween the language experience of the home and the school;

(c) making language awareness work an essential component of childcare andpreparation for parenthood;

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(d) equipping the individual child for more effective participation in the com-munity and in the workplace.

Strengthening study skills

The emphasis is primarily on improved communicative competence in thestandard English of the school and in foreign language learning. The CLIE (1985)paper also adds communication with computers to the agenda. The authors arguethat language awareness work should be built into the curriculum in the earlyyears of secondary schooling or late primary so as to facilitate the transition tosecondary school and to aid children in their first encounter with foreign languagelearning and with the registers of different school subjects (Hawkins, 1984: 4).

Bridging the gap between home and school

The main concern voiced here is with the ways in which schools can providechildren 'cheated of adult time by the lottery of family circumstances' with thenecessary tools for verbal learning (Hawkins, 1984: 14). It is assumed that thequality of verbal interaction in the classroom is somehow superior to that of mosthomes even though there is far less one-to-one dialogue with adults and far lesschild-initiated talk than in most homes.

This particular set of objectives for language awareness work is given consider-able prominence in Hawkins (1984) and in the NCLE (1985) document. It ishowever emphasised that language awareness work should not be seen as havinga primarily compensatory function, just for the verbally deprived, but should bepart of the language education agenda for all pupils. According to the NCLEWorking Party: 'This work is decidely not intended as a "sop" for the less ablepupils, the latest alternative to European Studies in foreign language time' (1985:9).

Preparation for parenthood

This proposal is adapted from the Bullock Report (DES, 1975). It is endorsedby both Hawkins (1984) and the NCLE Working Party (1985). Hawkins (1984)describes in some detail courses in language for child-care that have been intro-duced in secondary schools. The stated aims of these courses are threefold:

(i) To create an interest in the language of young children;(ii) To develop an understanding of the way children learn to talk;(Hi) To give opportunities to develop 'techniques' for talking to children (1984:

46).

The third aim is clearly linked to the perceived problem of the 'poor' quality ofinteraction in many homes.

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Participation in the community and in the workplace

The NCLE document makes a potentially important statement in this connec-tion hinting at the way in which language mediates social relations. The authorssay that: 'The most important and complex social signals come in language andso in preparation for a lifetime of interpreting them, students require a reliablebasis for their hypotheses. Their ability to support social groups in the communityand at work may well depend on their awareness of language' (1985: 23).

2. To prepare for better social integration

This theme is expressed in two clearly related ways:

(a) The objective of language awareness programmes should be to challengelinguistic prejudice and parochialism;

(b) Programmes should also be organised so that pupils can share their knowl-edge and experience of different language varieties and so come to anappreciation of the 'richness' of linguistic diversity in our society.

3. The need for more coordinated work on language in the schools

This theme recurs in all three of the programmatic texts on language awareness.All three come out in favour of moving towards the formulation of more coherentpolicies on language at three levels: within each school, across the local authorityand nationally. A centrally planned curriculum is argued for, particularly byHawkins. He argues his case with reference to 'a child's eye model' of thecurriculum and points out that children experience a whole range of differentapproaches to language throughout their schooling, particularly those who movefrom one local authority area to another.

Schooling, Language and Learning: Deeper Motivations andObjectives

We now go on to discuss what we see as the motivations and objectives whichlie behind the more explicit programmatic statements so far illustrated. There is,we feel, an unresolved tension between the potentially progressive and forward-looking aspects of the intentions of LA work and the conscious or unconsciousviews concerning the relationship between language, education and society, whichunderpin much of the thinking expressed in the three texts we have been examin-ing.

We shall now look at the views of schooling and of language which one finds inthe three programmatic texts. We shall also look at conceptions of learning, which,we suggest, accord with these views. We shall then illustrate the impact of thesedeeper motivations and objectives on materials. We shall complete this part ofthe paper by contrasting these with an alternative set of motivations, objectives,and views of schooling, language, and learning formulated from a critical perspec-tive.

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Schooling

Hawkins (1984) takes a liberal view of the functions of school, describingschools 'at their best' as 'refuges' (1984: 65) from the wider society, which oughtto provide 'the apprenticeship in autonomy which is vital for democracy'.

Significantly, he justifies the teaching of standard English in these terms. Weaccept that when schools pass on prestigious practices and values, such as thoseassociated with standard English, they give some learners 'qualifications' andhence some life chances they would not otherwise have. But we also believe thatit is important to avoid the illusion that schools iron out differences in 'cultural'or 'linguistic capital' (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). We also feel it is importantto realise that passing on such practices and values for whatever overt reason hasthe covert effect of legitimising them and the social relations that sustain them.

Language

The view of language reflected in these three sources represents a positive movefrom the prescriptive to the broadly descriptive and all three propose a form oflanguage study which is different from the 'grammar grind' or the 'purposelessparsing' of the past. There is a shift in focus to the study of language in use. InHawkins (1984), reference is specifically made to the relevance of speech acttheory. Nevertheless there is still a preoccupation with the study of languageforms per se and with 'the way in which language works'. The CLIE (1984)document comes out strongest in favour of the study of grammatical rules andcategories along with the appropriate metalanguage, though 'with attention paidto use as well as structure' (CLIE 1985: 40), and with a focus on dialectal andstylistic variation.

In both Hawkins (1984) and NCLE (1985) there is also a rejection of idealisedmodels of linguistic competence. Hawkins talks of substituting the 'real picture'of the learner for the 'linguist's abstraction' (1984: 70). However, in our viewthis promise is not borne out in practice. Let us focus upon the view of languagevariation which comes across. On one level, it represents a positive move awayfrom the ethos of the 1950s and 1960s, when the sole concern was the teachingand learning of the forms of standard English and pupils' home languages werecharacterised as a 'problem'. The proponents of LA have succeeded in identifyinga role for children's home languages in the language curriculum. They are nolonger seen as a 'problem' but as a 'source of enrichment'. The NCLE documentoutlines the following objective for work on language variation in the classroom:

to reveal to pupils the richness of linguistic diversity represented in the classby speakers of different dialects or by speakers of a range of mother tonguesand to show the relation of that variety to standard written and spoken English(NCLE, 1985: 8)

But there are two things that need to be said about the way in which this particularobjective has been formulated.

First, which pupils are most likely to benefit from 'enriching' surveys of thelanguages represented in the classroom? The implication is that those who will

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derive most benefit from work on linguistic diversity in the classroom are thosewho are monolingual and who speak the dominant variety of English at home.This monolingual bias is echoed in all three programmatic texts. It is particularlysalient in discussions of the role of language awareness work in challenginglinguistic prejudice:

While combatting linguistic complacency, we are seeking to arm our pupilsagainst fear of the unknown which breeds prejudice and antagonism. Aboveall, we want to make our pupils' contacts with language, both their own andthat of their neighbours, richer, more interesting, simply more fun (Hawkins,1984: 6)

The use of the possessive pronoun our here not only refers to monolingual pupilsbut also suggests that the author identifies more closely with them as a groupthan with their bilingual 'neighbours'.

Second, the NCLE proposal appears on the face of it to give the schools avanguard role in challenging the devaluation of varieties other than the standardin the wider society. But the reality of 'showing the relation' between the standardand other varieties does not live up to this. Take, for example, what is said aboutevaluation of language in the Hawkins et al. (1985) materials designed for usewith students in schools. They often appeal to the concept of appropriacy, andthis is cast in terms of choices of language which are 'suitable' or 'wrong' for agiven situation; it is difficult to tell from the materials what the classroom practiceis likely to be, but if it is to present the standard and other varieties as differingin conditions of appropriacy, this is we believe a tacit way of legitimising thesocial devaluation of other varieties. The point is that the standard will be'appropriate' in those situations which carry the greatest social clout. We suspectthat no more needs to be said: learners will get the implicit message, no matterhow much inequality is dressed up as variety.

Overt judgements of language as 'bad' feature in two ways in the materials.On the one hand, 'bad' means language which is 'ineffective', when 'it doesn'tdo the job it was meant to do', e.g. when it's difficult to understand, or 'boring'.This gives the interesting result, which we return to below, that 'Not all advertis-ing is bad language. An advertisement does its job well if it persuades us to buythe product . . .'.

On the other hand, negative evaluation appears in the discussion of attitudesto accent. But in this case, such evaluations are claimed to be a matter of individual'prejudice' which, it is claimed, we all have.

What is absent from the treatment of evaluation is any overt acknowledgementof socially legitimised devaluation of language varieties: social stigma is beingpassed off as individual prejudice, and learners are given a falsely rosy view oftheir sociolinguistic world. Since this is likely to conflict with their own experience,one wonders how seriously they will take the 'life's rich tapestry' approach tolanguages and varieties other than standard English. More fundamentally, this'oversight' deprives LA proposals of the most favourable sociolinguistic materialfor the critical awareness of the sociolinguistic world which we are advocating.

This brings us to the covert view of language in LA proposals. LA programmes

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present the naturalised domain of linguistic practices as a natural domain, a givenand common sense reality whose social origins are out of sight (Fairclough, 1989).What we mean is that the sociolinguistic world has the shape it has because ofthe social relations out of which it has been generated, whereas in the texts andmaterials we have looked at discourse is presented as 'natural data' and the socialprocesses which generate it are not referred to at all. The LA proposals, like somuch other work on language, do not challenge that illusion of naturalness, butreproduce it. Here, again, we find the deeper motivations and objectives wereferred to in connection with schooling: ensuring integration and neutralisingthreats to social integration, and legitimising the existing social order—in thiscase, the sociolinguistic face of the social order.

But there is one further 'oversight' here, which is apparent from the claimquoted above about 'bad' advertising. There is clearly a sense in which one mightat least consider saying that advertising is 'bad' language however effective it maybe—or even that the more effective, the worse! The reasons for saying that wouldhave to do with ideological properties of advertising discourse—the way, forinstance, ads standardly set up a 'reading' or 'viewing' position which you haveto belong to the ideological subject type 'consumer' to occupy. That, we stress,is something ads do linguistically, as well as through images. The further oversightwe have in mind is that the ideological shaping of language is not taken intoaccount. Differential social valuations of varieties, and ideological shaping oflanguage, are both achievements of power-holders in unequal relations of power.So if we put these oversights together, what we discover is a deeper oversight:the absence of any reference to the relations of power which lie 'behind' language.

The neglect of the ideological shaping of language is apparent in what is leftunsaid about what Mey has called the 'wording' of the world (Mey, 1985: 75-6),or what others have called 'lexicalization' (Fowler et al., 1979: 208-11). It ought,we suggest, to be a primary task of LA work to debunk the neutral labellingimage of 'the vocabulary' of a language as a national asset which comes fromnowhere in particular and belongs to everyone independently of class, gender orrace, and show children not only that there are radically different ways of wordingthe world according to the speaker's or writer's position or point of view, butalso that the most familiar and natural-seeming wordings incorporate implicitphilosophies, or theories—or ideologies. We exemplify this later.

Learning

The view of learning, and language learning in particular, in the three textsaccords, we believe, with the covert views of schooling and language which wehave identified above, and the deeper motivations and objectives which underliethem. Language awareness work is proposed as a separate element in the languagecurriculum. The aim of language awareness courses, according to Hawkins (1984),should be to 'bridge the space between LI and L2' (1984: 40). Through suchcourses, he predicts that students will gain 'insight into patterns' (1984: 41) andwill be provided with 'tools for verbal learning' (1984: 3). Equipped in this way,the student is seen as more likely to develop communicative competence in LI

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and L2. The assumption about learning is that heightened awareness (in thiscase about language) will necessarily lead to improved performance, without thedevelopment of awareness being explicitly linked to purposeful use of language,and the learner's own communicative needs and experience. We see this isolationof knowledge from practice and experience as a means of insulating learning fromthe learner's social past and future. This is a conception which facilitates theobjectives of social integration and the legitimation of the social and sociolinguisticorder, because it excludes the learner's experience of oppression from the processof being transformed into a conscious awareness and understanding as legitimateschool knowledge, and therefore becoming a potential basis for emancipation.One curricular consequence of the isolation of knowledge from practice andexperience is LA as a separate component of the curriculum: we are stronglyopposed to this. All language teachers should aim in the long term to have alanguage awareness agenda, and, indeed, all teachers should aim to foster in theirpupils a critical awareness of the language of learning in their own subject area.

Illustrations From the Syllabus and Course Materials

We will show now how course materials reflect these inadequacies and omissionsby referring to an extract from Language Varieties and Change (Pomphrey, 1985),one of the booklets in the Awareness of Language series (Hawkins, 1985). Theextract is reprinted below. We have chosen these materials because they werepublished simultaneously with the programmatic documents we have been describ-ing, but they are by no means the only materials available. There are several setsof language awareness materials currently on the market, and others are beingdeveloped as a result of local initiatives. Most of them have been influenced bythe theories we have been examining here, and embody the same sorts of motiv-ations and objectives to a greater or lesser extent. (See example on p. 258).

The view of schooling

Materials such as these can, intentionally or unintentionally, contribute to theprocess of fitting children in to the existing social order. This extract exemplifiesthe well-intentioned liberal idea that school ought to pass on to children prestigiouspractices and values, such as the use of 'standard' English, without devaluingtheir own existing practices and values. There is no recognition that schoolingcan also legitimate and reproduce practices of domination. In this example, theway in which some varieties have more status than others will not be on theagenda, and therefore will not be challenged.

This extract betrays a view of schooling as the inculcation of knowledge aboutwhich variety of English is 'appropriate' in particular situations. Non-prestigiousvarieties are accorded some legitimacy, since they are 'appropriate' in some(non-prestigious) places. The differential social values of varieties of English aredisguised because they are presented merely as a range of complementary varieties.'Standard' English is portrayed as one of this range; in this way the hierarchy of

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Theway we

write

Standard English is the dialect usually used for writtenEnglish. This is a good reason for learning the standardEnglish dialect, but it does not mean that other dialectscannot be written. Sometimes it is more appropriate not towrite in standard English.

;GJCompare these two versions of a well-known nursery rhyme,

t one a Jamaican version, the other in standard English. Whichdo you prefer and why? Discuss it in your group.

LH Queen a Heart

DiOueena HeartMeek plantain 1 art. .

Pon wan summer-da\;Di 'GinalaHcirt

Him tief wc\ de tart.An scuffle dem clean

awa\The Oueen of Hearts

The Oueen of HeartsShi1 made some tarts.

All on a summer's day:The Knave of Hcarls

He stole the tart>.And took them clean

awav

If you know a dialect othe"r than standard English, write astory or poem in that dialect. Read it to your friends and askthem to 'translate' it into standard English. Discuss whichversion you prefer.

values in which 'standard' enjoys superiority over other varieties is made invisible.School is responsible for ensuring that speakers of language varieties know theirplace.

The view of language

The materials in this series claim to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, inkeeping with mainstream linguistic approaches to language. As a result, a ratheruncritical view of language comes across. Conventional ways of using languageare presented as natural and unproblematic: learners are not encouraged to takea critical stance towards the generally accepted choice of genres, language varieties,structures and words.

For example, a key declared objective is to raise learners' consciousness of therichness of language varieties represented in Britain, and thereby improve classand race relations. Yet the materials naively attempt to be neutral. As a resultthey are in danger of reproducing entrenched social values and they lose anopportunity to air the issue of the differing status of different varieties. Far from

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guaranteeing 'freedom from other outside pressures' (Hawkins, 1984: 65), theseactivities invite socially determined value judgements into the classroom. This isexemplified in the extract shown here.

Firstly, the term 'dialect', with its pejorative overtones, is used instead of themore neutral term 'variety'. The social devaluation of dialects other than standardEnglish is evaded, since appropriacy is construed in terms of personal taste asopposed to social sanction—as if what had been socially devalued could berevalued by personal whim.

Secondly, students' reaction to these samples will be value-laden: it is naive toimagine otherwise. They are almost certain to prefer the version with which theyare familiar. Consequently prejudices will become entrenched rather than beingdefused.

Thirdly, the extract encourages learners to think that 'dialects other than standardEnglish' are appropriate only for quaint written uses such as nursery rhymes, storiesand poems. This helps to implicitly legitimise social sanctions against using suchvarieties for serious purposes such as academic writing or business.

Finally, the process of 'translating' is likely to be interpreted by most childrenas 'correcting', however evenhanded their teachers try to be. Benign pluralism isnot enough: students need positive encouragement to disregard the conventionsof language use which they have been conditioned to accept. Issues of socialevaluation must be aired openly before learners can engage in creative oppositionto the status quo.

The view of language learning

In these materials language awareness is isolated from language practice. Langu-age is treated as a body of knowledge to be studied and it is assumed that thiskind of language study will in some way contribute to improved performance incommunication skills, practised in a separate lesson. Language awareness is atbest offered as a tool for monitoring the accuracy and appropriacy of your languageuse, although the materials never suggest how you might achieve this. Thematerials make no reference to the idea that critical language awareness is itselfone of a constellation of communication abilities.

The extract above requires learners to talk about language and manipulate textin a disengaged way, rather than reading or writing for some purpose. The nurseryrhyme is written to amuse young children, but this is not the purpose for whichit is presented in the series. If children are writing their own stories and rhymes,it should be with the purpose of communicating to real readers, not simply fortheir classmates to 'translate'.

Whether to be creative or normative about the variety of English you use is acrucial issue. However, it is no use just talking about it: learners need to committhemselves to the decision in the way they talk and write, and experience itsconsequences.

Language awareness as exemplified in the extract above objectifies and sanitiseslanguage in a way which isolates it from its social context: learning about languageseparately from purposeful language use. Critical language awareness should

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equip children for the reality of communication in which one participant will bedominating another. Language learning involves not only knowing this, but alsoknowing what to do about it.

In this first part of our paper we have examined three programmatic statementsabout language awareness. We have argued that, while representing a positivedeparture from earlier prescriptions, they legitimise the inequalities of the existingsociolinguistic order. They represent the linguistic practices which sustain socialinequality as natural rather than naturalised.

In Part II of this paper, (to appear in Language and Education) we will describealternatives to this approach, which we call Critical Language Awareness. Wewill suggest that a critical awareness of how the sociolinguistic order is sociallyconstructed can complement the development of language capabilities, and canempower learners to challenge the status quo, and to work for change.

Notes1. This paper arose out of the work of the Language, Ideology and Power research group

in the Centre for Language in Social Life at Lancaster University. Other members ofthe group helped to shape it, including Luciano Celes, Stef Slembrouck and MaryTalbot. Parts I and II of the paper were originally presented as a single paper atthe BAAL Annual Meeting entitled 'Applied Linguistics in Society' in Nottingham,September 1987. It first appeared as Working Paper No. 1, Centre for Social Life,Lancaster University. We are grateful to the following for their comments on earlierdrafts of this paper: David Barton, John Broadbent, Michael Byram, Anna Jordanidou,Ben Rampton and Mary Talbot.

ReferencesBourdieu, P. and Passeron, J. C. (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture.

Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.Committee for Linguistics in Education (CLIE) (1985) Guidelines for evaluating school

instruction about language. British Association for Applied Linguistics, Newsletter No.23 Spring 1985.

Department of Education and Science (DES) (1975) A Language for Life (The BullockReport). London: H.M.S.O.

Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Lancaster University. Sub-mission by members of the Department to the Kingman Committee of Inquiry intothe Teaching of English. May 1987.

Doughty, P. el al. (1971) Language in Use. London: Edward Arnold.Fairclough, N. L. (1989) Language and Power. Longman: London.Fowler, R. et al. (1979) Language and Control. RKP: London.Freire P. (1982) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth.Hawkins, E. (1984) Awareness of Language: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press.Hawkins, E. (ed.) (1985) Awareness of Language Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.Mey, J. (1985) Whose Language? A Study of Linguistic Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins.National Congress on Languages in Education (NCLE) (1985) Language Awareness. Centre

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Critical language awareness part I: A critical review of three current approaches to language awareness