# What is the sociocultural purpose of banning slang in schools? Tags: psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, dialects, slang - Score: 4 - Views: 546 - Answers: 2 - Answered: yes - Asked by: Safety Cup (41 rep) - Asked: 2014-02-17 - Site: linguistics ## Question There was an article in the Guardian recently about a headteacher in the Black Country banning the use of local dialect in school: (http://www.theguardian.com/educa...) He says he's seeing children coming up through nursery with no ''proper'' english and blaming that on a lack of conversations round the dinner table at home. This policy was also implemented in a Croydon school recently in a bid to ''improve speech'': School bans use of slang speech What is your position on the use of dialect in schools? Will banning it really improve general literacy? What does it mean for the speakers of the local dialect? Will it affect how widely the local dialect is spoken or how people feel about it - will it change its status in the community? Will it improve the chances of the children economically, or does it just perpetuate class snobbery and elitism? Is the bad economy being used to more strictly curtail the speech and manneris