Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-pnlb5 Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-10-31T08:40:39.557Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social dialect, the semantic barrier, and access to curricular knowledge*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

David Corson
David Corson
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Education, The University of Wollongong
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper introduces the theory of the lexical bar. It reports research studies conducted in England and Australia. A semantic barrier exists in the English lexicon that emerges from socio-historical factors and is reinforced by the socio-occupational orderings of contemporary society. This barrier separates the lexes of conservative peripheral social dialects from the lexes of dominant central dialects. It serves to produce differential attainment rates in education and to reproduce a social class-based division of labour in English-speaking societies. (Language and thought; language and knowledge; language and education; diachronic linguistics and the sociology of language; the lexes of social dialects; semantic field theory; measures of semantic complexity; the priority of words in meaning; history of English.)

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 213 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Corson, D. J. (1981). Social class, the semantic barrier, and access to curricular knowledge. Ph.D. thesis, University of London.Google Scholar
Corson, D. J. (1982a). The Graeco-Latin (G-L) instrument: A new measure of semantic complexity in oral and written English. Language and Speech 25(1):1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corson, D. J. (1982b). The priority of words in meaning. Working Papers in Language and Linguistics 13:8–27.Google Scholar
Corson, D. J. (in press a). The Corson Measure of Passive Vocabulary. Language and Speech.Google Scholar
Corson, D. J. (in press b). The case for oral language in schooling. Elementary School Journal.Google Scholar
Corson, D. J. (forthcoming). The Lexical Bar: lexical change from twelve to fifteen years measured by social class, region and ethnicity. British Educational Research Journal.Google Scholar
Hirst, P. H. (1974). Knowledge and the curriculum – A collection of philosophical papers. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar