Document of Le Thanh Tu - Vietnam

Language Analysis and Language Learning 681

ASSIGNMENT 1 CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF HONEYS CHAPTER 4

List of content I/ Introduction II/ A short summary of Honeys article III/ Critical analysis IV/ Conclusion V/ Reference

I/ INTRODUCTION This critical analysis is about a work by John Honey. Specifically, it is Chapter 4: Some Enemies of Standard English from the book Language is power (1997). This polemic article is a good example of critical argument which exposing typical problems for example the vagueness, the lack of evidences, the misinterpretation, lack of in-text citation. Honeys reviews and criticisms of many educationists views about language acquisition, the position of Standard English, and attitudes toward it will be mentioned in this work. In detail, after the summary of the Chapter 4, main ideas of my critical analysis will be provided in turn and the last part is conclusion.

II/ A SHORT SUMMARY OF HONEYS ARTICLE John Honey, the author of the book Language is power (Honey, 1997) is well known as a prominent professor of English in different universities around the world. He is one of the first ones who raise the influential linguistic orthodoxy in language acquisition and the issue of having Standard English taught at school. Firstly he talks about the most powerful figure in twentieth-century linguistics, Noam Chomsky. According to Chomsky, the language capacity is in human blood or inborn and all the speech produced by the young child is a matter of interaction between the sounds that child hears in its environment and this innate mechanism. This innate mechanism, from now on, appears in many articles of other linguists and is considered as a essential part of human being. However, Honey argue that:
If all human societies are composed of individuals born with the same kind of programming device designed to enable them to learn to speak in ways which, whatever their apparent differences, reveal the same underlying universal grammar and sound system, then qualitative judgements about different languages or dialects are inadmissible, for many scholars in the social sciences, as are qualitative judgements about different kinds of human society or the specific social institutions which characterize them. (Honey, 1997, p.44)

The bestseller The Language Instinct of Steven Pinker is also mentioned by Honey. In this book, Pinker, with the similar thinking, also said that language is not cultural artefact but a biological instinct. Honey again disagreed to that deduction, and say that for Pinker it is a short step from the Language Myth to the Pinker Fallacy. One of Pinkers failure is the lack of explaining how the innate ability for language turns into ones capacity to use it in each situation appropriately, and the other involve the lack of
3

explaining the relationship of the innate ability to the acquisition of the working rules. He is said to be not able to identify the differences between everyday or natural language and a standard written language. To Honey, Pinkers ideas is something absurd. He spent a lot of this book content to show out Pinkers unreasonable argument. Through out his article after that, Honey agrees with Tollefson that making standard English central for school instruction is unfair to children whose home language is standard English. He revealed strong support to the idea of not teaching Standard English to all learners. He write very long prose about a class dialect and has the tendency to agree with one of definition that standard English was the authoritarian creation of a small and self-serving lite (as cited in Honey, 1997). In his opinion, standard English is originally for educated native speakers, and use a lot of explanation to imply that nonnative speakers should not learn standard English. Honey 1997 argues that if Tollefsons thinking were true, disminishing the role of standard English in society would be put in for priority. This special idea force me to read Honeys article again and again to clearly understand and write this critical analysis. Honey ends his article with the basic Marxist notion of social class. Non-standard English is part of the integrity and solidarity of the working class: allowing some working class children to adopt the speech-forms of the more educated classes crucially weakens that solidarity and political power.

III/ CRITICAL ANALYSIS A great deal of confusing examples does not express Honeys ideas but makes his article vague. For instance, he talks a lot about standard English and it position in society without authoritative definition. Readers can find out two places in the article that refer to the concept of standard English, but Honey subjectively defines the concept and bases on the unreliable sources. Firstly, he considers Standard English as a specialized variety which has to be learnt and whose complete rules are not acquired at ones mothers knee by the interaction of an innate language acquisition mechanism with whatever happens to be the speech of the home and peer group (Honey, 1997, p.48). The second one is not clear enough also, he say that Standard English is a special form representing a superimposition upon natural language, one which develop its own structures, vocabulary, styles, qualities and functions, all of which need to be specially learnt (Honey, 1997, p.48-49). In comparison with some other definition, Honeys one is really a deficit, for example in the Longman Guide to English Usage, co-edited (with Janet Withcut) by the well-known linguist Sidney Greenbaum, offers the following definition of Standard English ..: the type of English that is used by educated people throughout the English-speaking world. It is a variety with distinctive features of vocabulary and grammar, and not an accent (type of pronunciation); Standard English is therefore spoken by people with different accents It is the English that is taught in the education system of English-speaking countries and is also taught to foreigners; it is the variety that appears in print and (for most serious purposes) is the spoken language of the mass

media (as cited in Rollason, 2001). In addition, although Honey take Standard English for granted, his ending in this chapter admits that certain ideological issues have influenced the way the history of Standard English has been re-written. This means before being re-written, the Standard English was not standardized at all. Most of Honeys argument and statement is not objectively expressed and fully supported by proof of evidence. In detail, he aims at refuting a number of orthodoxies about language or English, especially the notions by Noam Chomsky and his psycholinguist colleague, Steven Pinker. When Chomsky say that a child is born with the highly restrictive principles of universal grammar (Honey, 1997, p.44), Honey thinks that Chomskys notion implies human languages and dialects are equally good. This does not mean that. Furthermore, Honey use emotional writing in this work and it can be admitted that the following passage is full of his sarcastic thinking: It is worth devoting some space to Pinkers book, since it has had astonishing sales success and has achieve something of a cult following, with Stephen Hawkings bestselling but largely unread book on the universe. (Pinkers is, at any rate, much easier to understand) (Honey, 1997, p.46). In giving comment about Pinkers book, he use the evidence containing ordinary reader, some crucial problem which is unclear for understanding. He also spent a greater part for write about The Pinker Fallacy and noted that there are several absurdities Honey, 1997, p.49) in Pinkers book. In addition to above complaint, the Language Myth is continuously used to compare with Pinkers work. About the notion of class dialect, Honey again use general evidence: some linguist assume that it is

wrong for non-standard-speaking children to study standard language because it is not for them (Honey, 1997, p.52). His using such ideas to prove his arguments means decreasing the value of his book. It is also unreasonable for Honey to claim that while the fact of acquiring standard English can aid an individual in improving personal status, on the macrocosmic level it can aid in maintaining the overall social status quo. That failure to precipitate social revolution may be the ultimate crime of teachers of standard English. He use no thing to judge a group of people in society. According to Trudgill, Honey fails to articulate this thought to persuade readers that Standard English is superior to other dialects (Trudgill, 1998). When studying the way the Blacks can be offered upward mobility and describe their present condition, Honey wrote class inequality has grown enormously since the 1970s, with Black people still vastly over-represented in the bottom fifth of the income table. The fifth in his article is from which statistic evidence is still a question. Similar to the deficit of his bias, he easily misinterpret other ideas. There is a misinterpretation in talking about Pinkers argument. When he cites the Pinker views that although language is an instinct, written language is not and the ability to converse normally in everyday English differs from the ability to learn the standard written dialect in school Honey, 1997, p.49). Honey misinterpreted them as two different assumptions. Finally, the articles readers really can not find out proper in-text citation as well as face the difficulties that they can not read those ideas and reconfirm them. For example,
7

talking about Dr Cameron, withdrawing a lot of her opinion, using her words like perpetrates a falsehood, Standard English is, and always has been, a class variety, Honey, however did not mentioned about the origin of this statement. IV/ CONCLUSION Peter Trudgill has given his comment about Honey Language is Power (Trudgill, 1998):
The book is well written. It is also, in a sense, fully researched, although it is full of errors and half-truths, not to mention wilful misrepresentation. It is clear that Honey, though not at all a linguist, is a clever scholar. He has marshalled his (albeit dishonest and illogical) argument well, and they will be convincing to many who know nothing about language and languages and, sadly, that is most people. He is widely read in certain areas of linguistics, though he still makes elementary sociolinguistic errors, such as failing to distinguish between dialect and style, and he has used all his skills as an academic historian and they are considerable to locate and point out areas where linguists do not agree with one another and to cite passage where some of our more ideologically committed colleagues have gone over the top.

Although Honeys work contains vagueness, misinterpretation, does not base on fact and does not cite in text appropriately, it is useful to read. Reading this work to draw some experiences in writing and get used to criticizing new linguistic items like innate mechanism, language instinct, standard English and something so called enemies of standard English. To Honey, standard English is unreasonably better than other dialects and this formal language education especially grammar rules is crucial and should be taught at school for everyone to acquire.

V/ REFERENCE

Honey, J. (1997). Language is power: the story of Standard English and its Enemies: UK: Faber & Faber. Rollason, C. (2001). The question of standard English: Some considerations on John Honey's "Language is power". A Journal of the Language Services of the European Institutions (Luxembourg: European Commission)(3), 30-60. Trudgill, P. (1998). Review of Language is power. The story of Standard English and its enemies. Journal of Socialinguistics, 2(3), p457-461.