The (white) ears of Ofsted: a raciolinguistic perspective on the listening practices of the schools inspectorate

IAN CUSHING, Julia Snell

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (journal)peer-review

52 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

England has had a schools inspectorate since 1839, first in the form of Her Majesty's Inspectorate (HMI), and since 1992, in the form of the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted). The inspectorate, a workforce made up of a majority of white inspectors, conduct regular inspections of all state schools in England, producing reports which comment on various aspects of educational provision, including teachers’ and students’ spoken language. In this article we deploy a raciolinguistic genealogy to examine the listening practices of the inspectorate, drawing on historical inspection reports generated from archival work, inspectorate language policy, and a large corpus of contemporary reports. We show how raciolinguistic ideologies are deeply embedded into the sociopolitical culture of the inspectorate, and how these ideologies translate into systems of sonic surveillance in which the nonstandardised language practices of students and teachers are heard as impoverished, deficient, and unsuitable for school. (Raciolinguistics, schools, language policing, standardised English, Ofsted, England, social class, ideology)
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)363-386
Number of pages24
JournalLanguage in Society
Volume52
Issue number3
Early online date18 Mar 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Jun 2023

Keywords

  • raciolinguistics
  • schools
  • language policing
  • standardised English
  • Ofsted
  • England
  • ideology

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