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Children's use of spoken standard English

Richard Hudson and Jasper Holmes

last changed 19 May 2007

Bibliographical information

Abstract

This report summarises the findings of a small-scale investigation of the spoken English used by 11 and 15-year-olds. The study used a set of audio tapes made during 1988 in different regions of England . The children were recorded in situations likely to encourage their use of standard rather than nonstandard English and the focus of the study was the extent to which they did use standard forms in these situations. Additionally, the study investigated which features were involved in the distinctions between standard and non-standard English. The total number of children in the study was 350.

The main findings were as follows:

• 32 per cent of the speakers did not use any nonstandard forms;
• girls used fewer non-standard forms than boys at both ages;
• ll-year-olds used fewer non-standard forms than 15year-olds, but this may be simply because they spoke less;
• almost every non-standard form was used by some speakers alongside its standard equivalent, ie by 'choice' rather than out of ignorance;
• there were 13 clusters of non-standard forms which occurred in all four regions, and between one and nine others which were specific to one region. These clusters are listed, with examples, in Appendix A;
• these clusters vary a great deal in frequency, both in terms of how often the occasion to use them arose and also in terms of how likely they were to be used when the occasion did arise;
• the average number of distinct non-standard forms used per speaker is hard to calculate, but among those who used any non-standard forms at all, the number probably lies somewhere between two and five. (The evidence is reviewed in Appendix B.)