Follow the Word gap: The Social Life of a Deficit Concept

Cushing, Ian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1752-1411 (2025) Follow the Word gap: The Social Life of a Deficit Concept. Reading Research Quarterly. ISSN 0034-0553

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Abstract

This article uses a ‘follow the thing’ methodology to trace the trajectory of the so-called word gap from its original conception in 1990s US academic knowledge production through to a teacher education programme and three schools in the north of England, in the mid-2020s. It focuses on one teacher's first encounters, reproduction, and ultimately rejection of the word gap. Far from an individual narrative, I use this example to tell a broader story of how global ideologies of linguistic deficit come to materialize in classrooms and restrict pedagogical autonomy. My methodological approach in this paper is purposefully diverse—a methodological mash up which draws from critical geographies, ethnography of language policy, critical applied linguistics, and the critical sociology of education. I show how a single named linguistic concept invented 30 years ago in the US continues to have a powerful influence in contemporary classrooms over 4000 miles away, whilst generating economic profit for its inventors, supporters, exporters, and suppliers. Put another way, I document the social life of the word gap as a concept which has far spatiotemporal reaches and is a core part of the globalized industry of deficit thinking more broadly.