Social Status

Relationship between class and region

• this is often represented as a truncated pyramid

  • the higher you go up the social classes, the smaller the linguistic differences from one region to the next

• example:

  • Corporate lawyers from New York and Los Angeles may have slightly different accents, but their grammatical systems will be virtually identical

  • security guards working in the same corporations in those 2 cities will sound much more different from each other (how different will depend on a lot of things, including their ethnicity)

Class and Language

• societies are divided into multiple groups

• some groups have higher status or prestige

• language use is variable — accents, grammar, spelling, structure

  • particular variants become associated with prestige groups and thus behave in particular ways

    • higher status people use more prestige variants

    • everybody uses more prestige variants in more formal situations

How do we determine Social Class?

• Karl Marx (1848): Capitalists vs. Proletariat

• Socialists: Class distinctions based on lifestyle and life chances (go to gym everyday, vacation often)

What class doesn’t mean

• income

  • higher class than income: teachers, artists, writers

  • higher income than class: dope dealers

• but… income is a measure of social status in many studies

Determining Class

• (in order to do studies correlating class and linguistic behaviour)

• you can use a complex scorecard

  • type of home, neighbourhood, income, occupational prestige

• or something simpler

  • occupational prestige alone

  • very high levels of agreement about which jobs are considered higher or lower prestige

Borrowed Prestige

• speakers’ setting and the role that they’re playing can affect their use of language features associated with a particular class

• Labov (1966) found":

  • employees in fancy stores use higher-prestige language forms than those in less fancy stores

  • even though their actual occupations and income are the same

Social Aspirations

• people talk like who they want to be

  • speech reflects aspirations, not current status

  • sociolinguistic identity is shaped by desired social position

Speech Adjustment: “R” use rate

• stigmatized forms and formality

  • adjusting speech in formal contexts or when paying attention

Crossover Effect

• perfect correlation of classes and styles

  • higher class = higher use of prestige forms

  • more formal style = higher use of prestige forms

• exception: the second-highest class uses even more prestige forms than the highest, in very formal styles

  • becomes they aspire to move forward — social hypercorrection

• social hypercorrection: they overdo the requirements of the situation

• this pattern has been found in many studies, including Labov’s R use rate

Linguistic Insecurity

• people trying to move up the social scale “play it safe”

  • at least when they’re paying attention to their speech

  • ex; changing accent to match the people in the capital city of Iran

Linguistic Market Effects

• it’s not just your class that matters, but whether your job requires a lot of standard language

What kind of linguistic forms are involved in style/class differences

• things that people notice and associate with a particular class

  • sociolinguistic markers: noticed, involved in style shifting

Sociolinguistic Markers

• regional dialect words

  • saying pop instead of soda to indicate a Midwest US origin

• pronunciation variations

  • a British speaker pronouncing bath with a back vowel compared to an American speaker with a front vowel

• Social Class Markers

  • using gonna instead of going to associated with a less formal register

• Gendered Language

  • using different forms of address like sir or ma’am to show respect

• Ethnic Markers

  • certain vocabulary or grammatical structures specific to a particular ethnic group

Social Mobility

• how hard is it to move between classes in your society

  • if you’re willing (and able) to change your class, you may make changes to your speech, even before the move, to prepare yourself or to signal to others how you want to be seen

(Almost) No Mobility

• if moving between classes is almost impossible, the groups are often known as castes rather than classes

  • very different language features are very tightly linked to each class

Limited Mobility

• England, nineteenth century

  • people moving up the social ladder desperately try to learn speech features of higher classes (or avoid lower features)

  • many prescriptive language guidebooks and grammars published at this time

  • authors competed to see who could come up with the strictest rules!

• England, twentieth century

  • “U vs. non-U” speech

  • vocabulary that were then associated with the upper (U) and non-upper (non-U) classes

Greater Mobility

• more exposure to the language of different classes

• if a social group gains status, their language can, too

Status and Standards

• the language of the higher groups usually becomes the standard language of the community, the thing taught in schools and heard in the media

  • “correct” language

• but there’s nothing in the language itself that makes it correct

  • it’s all about attitudes and assumptions

Class and Education

• Berstein (1961) suggested that middle class and working class kids used language in different ways and this thought differently

  • elaborated code: middle class, more like school

  • restricted code: working class, not useful for school

Trudgill Study

• Trudgill (1972) studied men’s and women’s language use

  • men used more non-standard local forms than women

    • ex; men pronounced words like dew and tune the same as do and toon, rather than using the southern British English pronunciations (something like dyoo and tyoon)

  • but when he asked people which form they used, the men over-reported their use of the local form, while the women under-reported it

Covert Prestige

• hidden positive evaluation that speakers give to other (presumably non-standard) forms “street credibility”

• unofficial prestige

  • street talk

  • local speech

Overt Prestige

• associated with sounding “proper”

  • talking elegant and fancy

  • language features associated with school, media

Categorical Rules

• rules apply every time that they can apply

Probabilistic Contraints

• the opposite of categorical rules

• constraints are not absolute but rather tendencies in one direction

Linguistic Constraint

• linguistic factor that governs the use of a particular variant

Social Constraint

• social factor like sex or age that governs the use of a particular variant

Status

• social positions that society assigns to its members, or the differences between social groups, in terms of the prestige associated with them by others

Variable

• the abstract representation of a source of variation, realized by at least 2 variants

  • ex; gonna and will are variants of the variable future temporal reference

Variant

• the different expressions, or actual realizations, or a variable

  • ex; pronouncing the suffix -ing as “ing” or “in”

Prestige

• variants associated with higher-status groups are considered prestige forms

Stigma

• a negative association, something viewed pejoratively

Borrowed Prestige

• speakers’ setting and the role they’re playing can lead them to use language features associated with a particular class

Aspiration

• people often try to talk like who they want to be

Crossover Effect

• in formal situations, speakers using prestige variants even more often than the group above them

Social Hypercorrection

• when speakers overdo what they see as the linguistic requirements of a situation (usually in the direction of formality or use of standard variants)

Linguistic Insecurity

• the force hypothesized to drive people to use a variant that is thought to be prestigious or correct and that is not part of their own casual speech

Linguistic Market

• the importance of standard language in the social and economic life of the speaker

Salient/Salience

• usually refers to a noticeable variant — one that stands out due to physiological, social, and/or psychological factors

Stereotype

• a variable that is socially marked (very noticeable and often discussed)

Marker

• a variable that speakers are less aware of than a stereotype, but whose use they can control in style shifting

Indicator

• a variable that can show differences by age or social group and is often associated with particular characteristics but is not subject to style shifting

Social Mobility

• the ability to move between social classes, often determined by how defined class roles are in a particular culture

Caste

• in societies where mobility is more difficult and linguistic boundaries are more rigid, social groups, or castes, tend to be fixed

  • ex; traditional (Hindu) Indian social structure

Perscriptive

• an approach to language that is focused on rules of correctness

• how language “should be” used

• contrasted with descriptive

Sociolect

• a subset of language used by a particular social group or class

• sometimes classed social dialect

Unmarked

• opposite of marked

• feature that does not get noticed

Overt Prestige

• positive or negative assessments of variants that are in line with the dominant norms associated with sounding “proper” and the people are aware of, often coinciding with the norms of the media, educational institutions, or higher socio-economic classes

Covert Prestige

• a norm or target that speakers unconsciously orient to, with a sort of hidden positive evaluation of speakers five to other (presumably, non-standard) forms

• linguistic equivalent of street credibility

Basilect

• a term used in creole studies to refer to the most creole-like variety