1. Language and Social Class
Prepared by: DR NAJAH AL-JAHDALI

3. Speaker A
Speaker B
I done it yesterday.
I did it yesterday.
He ain’t got it.
He hasn’t got it.
It was her what said it.
It was her that said it.

4. Compare between the following two speakers’ speech:
► What kind of differences are there?
Grammatical differences.
Phonetic and phonological differences.
►These differences give us clues about their social backgrounds.

5. Social-class dialect/accents
Social-class dialects (sociolects): a socially distinct variety.
Social-class accents: (related to distinct pronunciations).
► Different social groups use different linguistic varieties (such as –h dropping).
We, as experienced members of a speech community, have learnt to classify speakers accordingly.
How did these social varieties develop?

6. The development of social and regional varieties
Geographical barriers and distance
Social barriers and distance
Regional dialect boundaries coincide with geographical barriers, mountains, swamps, rivers.
For example, ‘house’ [hu:s] north of the river Humber vs. [haus] (diphthong) south of the river.
The diffusion of a linguistic feature through a society may be stopped by social barriers of social class, age, race, religion, or other factors.
For example, a linguistic innovation that begins in upper class may reach the lower class last, if at all.
In this chapter, we will concentrate on one of the many forms of social differentiations of class, age, race, or religion ► social stratification.

7. Social stratification
Social stratification is a term used to refer to any hierarchical ordering of groups within a society especially in terms of power, wealth, and status.
In the industrialized societies of the West, social stratification takes the form of stratification into social classes and gives rise linguistically to social-class dialects.
Social class is a controversial concept, no general agreement as to the exact nature or definition or existence of social classes.

8. Social stratification
However, social classes can be taken to include individuals with similar social and/or economic characteristics.
Social class stratification is not universal. In India, for example, the society is stratified into different castes (caste dialects). Table 2 p.26

9. Caste dialects in India
Brahmin (Dharwar)
Brahmin
(Bangalore)
Non-Brahmin (Dharwar)
Non-Brahmin
‘it is’
ədə
ide
ayti
‘inside’
-olage
-alli
-āga
Infinitive affix -ō
-āk
Participle affix -ā
‘sit’
kūt-
kunt-
reflexive kō
kont-
kont

10. Caste dialects vs. Social-class dialects
Table 2 shows that social distance is more differentiating than geographical distance.
This stratification is different and complex than the class societies of the English-speaking world for example (social-class dialects).
How is it different??

11. Caste dialects vs. Social-class dialects
Caste dialects are easier to study and describe linguistically than social-class dialects for many reasons:
a. Castes are relatively stable.
a. The social situation is more fluid and as a result the linguistic situation is more complex.
b. Casts have clearly named groups which are rigidly separated from each other with inherited membership.
b. Social classes are not clearly defined or labeled entities but simply groups people with similar social and economic characteristics.
c. Little possibility of movement from one caste to another.
c. Social mobility (movement up or down the social hierarchy) is possible.
Accordingly, these dialects tend to be clear-cut and social differences in language are sometimes greater than regional differences.
As a result, it is difficult for a linguist to describe these dialects.

12. Social-class dialects
The linguistic reaction to this complexity of social dialects
Dialectologists focused on the speech of rural speakers for two reasons:
a. thinking of recording dialects that might die out.
b. There was a feeling that in the speech of the elders are the ‘real’ and ‘pure’ homogenous dialect.
Wrong: even small villages are heterogeneous.
Linguists ignore them by focusing on idiolects (the speech of a person at one time in one style).
This proved to be a wrong approach because idiolects tends to be regular than the speech of a community as a whole.

13. Social-class dialects
It is only after the Second World War, linguists realized that:
1. they are obtaining an imperfect and inaccurate picture of the speech of different areas.
2. They are confining dialect studies to rural areas, they missed important information about the majority of people who live in towns.
3. Urban dialectologist faced the problem of describing fully and accurately the speech of large towns and cities with heterogeneous populations such as in a city like New York with a population of 8+ millions?

14. William Labov
In 1966 the American linguist William Labov published The Social Stratification of English in New York City, in which a large scale survey, tape-recorded interviews with 340, by random sample (each person has a chance to be interviewed).

15. William Labov Labov’s work:
His informants were randomly selected (not friends or relatives).
His informants’ speech was representative of New York city (esp. the Lower East Side) since these informants were a representative sample.
Therefore his work was an accurate description of all the varieties in this area.
Labov showed that variation is not free in the speech of New Yorkers as was claimed by traditional linguists, e.g ‘guard’, ‘beard’, and ‘bad’.
Variation is not random, but determined by extra-linguistic factors in a predictable way (if they were of a certain class, age, and sex).

16. William Labov Labov’s work was a revolution because he:
1. developed techniques to draw out normal speech from people in spite of the recorder.
2. developed methods for quantitative measurements of linguistic data.
3. The problem of heterogeneity of speech communities has been overcome because we are able to correlate linguistic features with social class accurately.

17. Social and regional dialect variation in Britain
Social variation
highest class: standard dialect
regional variation lowest class: most localized non standard (dialect continuum)

18. A lexical example Standard English: scarecrow
Regional variation in the most localized regional English dialects:
bogle, flay-crow, mawpin, mawkin, bird-scarer, shay, guy, moggy, bogeyman, shuft, rook-scarer, etc.

19. A grammatical example:
Standard English:
He’ a man who likes his beer.
He’ a man that likes his beer.
Regional non-standard variation is greater than social variation (≠ to India).
He’ a man at likes his beer.
He’ a man as likes his beer.
He’ a man what likes his beer.
He’ a man he likes his beer.
He’ a man likes his beer. (Ø)

20. Social and regional accent variation in Britain
social variation
highest class: RP
regional variation lowest class: most localized variant

21. Social and regional accent variation in Britain
Edinburgh
Newcastle
Liverpool
Bradford
Dudley
Norwich
London RP
hØʊm
Intermedi-ate
hoːm
huom
hoʊm
hɔːm
hɔʊm
ɔʊm
huːm
hɔm
hum
ʊm
Most localized
heːm
hiem
jem
oʊm
ɔːm
wʊm ʊm
æʊm
Sociolinguistic studies showed how RP, the intermediate, and the most localized accents are related to social class.

22. Measuring
If we want to obtain a correct picture of the relationship between language and social stratification we must be able to measure both the linguistic and social phenomena. How?
►Social class: Assign individuals a numerical index score on the basis of income, education, other factors, then group them with others who have similar indexes.
►language: (more difficult). Labov’s approach: Taking a linguistic feature and check its varieties in a community.
Study: -s (the 3rd person singular present simple tense) in Detroit USA and in Norwich, England:

23. Study of –s in Norwich and Detroit
In Norwich and in Detroit, the 3rd p.suffix –s is not present in the speech of some people:
She like him very much.
He don’t know a lot, do he?
It go ever so fast.
Hypothesis: Since –s is standard, and since standard English is associated with higher classes, we may suspect that there is a correlation between the usage of –s and social class.
Methodology: Tape record, listen, transcribe, count.

24. Study of –s in Norwich and Detroit
Table 4, p. 34
Norwich (%) Detroit (%)
MMC UMC
LMC LMC
UWC UWC
MWC LWC
LWC

25. Study of –s in Norwich and Detroit
General Result:
There is a correlation between social class and usage of –s

26. Correlational Sociolinguistics
Studies like these have been labeled to be under correlational sociolinguistics which deals with:
1. Assigning a social status to speakers.
2. Correlation between the social class and the linguistic forms.
3.Tells us something about the social structure of particular communities.
4. It tells us more about idiolects and their characteristics.
5. It tells us about social-class dialects.
6. It tells a great deal of information about the processes involved in linguistic change.

27. Thanks a lot
See you next class 