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RECENTLY, WHILE COMPILING A BIBLIOGRAPHY on Black English, I became aware of a startling and disturbing tendency among many linguists who write about the use of Standard English by black students: those authors who most adamantly oppose the forced acquisition of Standard English often make deprecatory and calumnious remarks about female teachers. That is, those who most vehemently voice opposition to what they perceive as racial injustice are often the same ones most inclined to perpetuate prejudice based upon sex. In his now famous article, Bi-Dialectalism: The Linguistics of White Supremacy (English Journal, 58 [1969], 1307-15), James Sledd almost savagely attacks the pretty lady teacher of Standard English whose inability to understand her black victim is so great that she cannot detect the imprecations he utters unless she watches his lips. Sledd further assails this prototypic witch-inteacher's-clothing for her prissy white model sentences and rampant hypocrisy. And in Doublespeak: Dialectology in the Service of Big Brother (College English, 33 [1972], 439-56), he again vilifies female condescending culturevendors and maintains that they are the types young black males hate most. (It is curious that Sledd consistently polarizes the female teacher and the black male student. If he believes that the linguistic tug-of-war is truly of a racial, not sexual, nature, it seems he should consider all black students as victims-not the males only.) J. L. Dillard employs a similar tactic in his book, Black English. In writing about the black tradition of Fancy Talk he says:

GROWING UP during the childhood and adolescence of television in the forties and fifties, I learned, as sacred truth, that TV did to your mind what Coke, potato chips, and too much chocolate did to your teeth and complexion. While the roofs of the houses in our upper middle class neighborhood, and particularly those belonging to members of certain ethnic and racial groups, were positively bristling with two, three, or even four pieces of right-angled metal sculpture, the pristine purity of the skyline above our fake Tudor house remained a point of pride for my scrupulously WASP parents until the Nixon-Kennedy debates brought them to their knees. Traces of this early training remained with me until quite recently, taking the form of a conviction, expressed in action if not in words, that prime time television was directed to, and rated by, a group that did not include me in its numbers. What could be more disturbing, then, than to find myself, a dues-paying member of the Modern Language Association, sitting in front of a television set cheering at five of ten, or weeping at twenty past eight? Yet this did indeed happen this fall and winter as I was gathering material for a course in Popular Culture. I will give you some of the instances that produced this unseemly, and at times embarrassing reaction, all taken from situation comedies named after the leading female character or focused on her life and problems.

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CONSIDERATIONS OF STRUCTURALISM as a mode of literary criticism consistently encounter two problems. First, though is generally taken to refer to a single methodology, the diversity of approaches actually included under this term is immense. (And this is not just because structuralism is theoretically applicable to all subject matters, and has, therefore, necessarily a variety of formulations; this diversity exists even within a single discipline.) Because of this, it is difficult to discern the basic assumptions that underlie and define the structuralist approach. Second, since structuralism has its origins primarily in the physical and social sciences, it is necessarily the case that, even if its essential principles can be deduced, they will be expressed in a terminology and context that makes their applicability to literary criticism obscure and even doubtful. Nevertheless, I believe it is possible to determine a few fundamental assumptions that are shared by almost all varieties of structuralism, and to illustrate, or at least suggest, their relevance to literary criticism. Accordingly, using the theories of Jean Piaget, Claude L6vi-Strauss, Michael Lane, and Roland Barthes, I shall begin by defining follow this with a discussion of what appear to be four defining principles of structuralism, then briefly consider a few supposed and real disadvantages of the method as a means of literary criticism, and conclude with an actual structuralist analysis that illustrates the concepts involved in, and the advantages of, the approach. Piaget once defines structure as a of transformations,' and though there are various elaborate definitions of structure available, this succinct phrase includes the two concepts most important for literary criticism. By using the term system, Piaget is emphasizing that structures are not aggregates, i.e., composites formed of elements that are independent of the complexes into which they enter (p. 7). Instead, a system is such that, in the words of L6viStrauss, It is made up of several elements, none of which can undergo a change without effecting changes in all the other elements.'2 And by using the term transformations, Piaget is pointing out that one or more units of a structure,

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ing predominantly white Italian working-class students. My students arrive from high school with elaborately constructed ideology. A whole host of opinions on sexuality, war, racism, welfare, socialism, labor, and revolution has been imposed on them by their daily experience and by the authorities in their lives. Luckily, there is no unanimity in their manner of thinking, but their dominantly conservative mode of thought indicates how potent the bourgeois mass media, the conservative parochial and lower education systems, the patriarchal family, and the male-dominated job market remain in fashioning their consciousnesses. Radical education designed to foster counter-consciousness has to be as com-

THE ATTACK ON NEW CRITICISM and traditional historical research in recent years has led many American academics in English and history to re-evaluate their teaching and research, and to reconsider the canon of their respective fields. For many this has led to a widening of the definition of acceptable evidence for study; oral traditions, folk customs, music, film and the mass media are now receiving attention from both historians and literary critics. The study of racial minorities and submerged cultures, such as the working class, women, religious groups and millenial movements, has also opened new perspectives. Nevertheless, much more could be done. Journals still mainly publish textual studies or accounts of parliamentary and administrative quarrels. Annually countless critical analyses of the novels of Faulkner, Conrad or Henry James issue forth from our university presses, and we are already inundated with surveys of consensus-making history. In the meantime, we have left unexplored the lesser known cultures which contribute to Anglo-American societies. These areas of study deserve serious attention both for themselves and for the insights they give into better known writers and movements. Black Studies programs across the country have proven invaluable for ethnic minorities and white students who daily grow more aware of the large areas of American culture left unexamined and unread. The same potential for teaching and study exists in working class studies, women studies, and Euro-American studies, not to mention the domains now considered more appropriate for the folklorist and anthropologist. The following essay is a case study in the analysis of nineteenth century British working class poetry, which it is hoped will provide a guide for research into similar literature in America, the Commonwealth and other English speaking countries.' While such working class institutions as trade unions, the cooperative movement, religious groups and musical organizations have all been studied to a greater or lesser extent, working class literature has been almost completely ignored, except by folklorists usually looking for rural throwbacks rather than industrial characteristics.2

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