Cheque Your Spelling

I hope everyone has and is getting through the exam season in reasonable form. As we draw to a close on this year’s proceedings, its perhaps interesting to reflect on the way our intelligence and ability is socially constructed! Sociology students will be well aware of Bernstein’s research into elaborated and restricted code, which highlighted the way that our use of grammar and syntax marks out our social position, and is then used to pass judgement on our level of intelligence. And of course, its not just grammar - our accent too, is an important marker of social position. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have witnessed negative judgements being made about a person’s inteligence, simply because they have a strong regional accent or use a lot of slang. One other marker, as a leader in today’s Times indicates, is spelling.

Times readers will no doubt be concerned that their children maintain social status and indeed, improve their job prospects, by making sure they know their onions when it comes to spelling. So, it’s not just how we speak - but all aspects of language which take on social significance. So I hope you have checked your spellings carefully and are not one of those who believe that ‘alot’ is one word, or are unaware of the ‘i’ before ‘e’, except after ‘c’ rule. As an examiner and a sociology teacher, these things give me considerable grief. I try to look beyond the spelling and grammar and try to identify whether the candidate has got the basis of a good answer and relevant knowledge and evaluation and so on. But it is hard, and whatever my sociological understandings, I do find that what I consider poor spelling and grammar, invariably colour my impression of a piece of writing.

All I can say, is that if you are going to spell poorly or perhaps that should be ‘differently’, make sure you have some really good strong points or arguments to make, like Tom Leonard.