Language use and educational success: An empirical response to Joan Tough's the Development of Meaning’ (1977)

Abstract

Tough's recently published research on children's use of language, which forms the basis for a large-scale curriculum project, sets out to demonstrate a strong relationship between complexity of language use and social class. This paper¹ reports a partial replication of Tough's approach, based on data collected in the Bristol longitudinal study of language development. The main findings are that, using Tough's scheme for analysing language, there is no clear-cut relationship between language use and either social class or educational success after one year of schooling. The discrepancies between the results of the two studies are attributed to (a) the distortion introduced into Tough's study by the comparison of polarised social-class groups, and (b) the non-interactive conception of communication that underlies her analysis of language use. It is suggested that what differentiates children in their preparedness for school is the extent of their experience of ‘negotiation of meaning’ through language, and that such experience can be found in homes from all social classes.