Language and Social Class

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What is social class defined as?
A status hierarchy in which individuals and groups are classified on the basis of esteem and prestige acquired mainly through economic success and accumulation of wealth.
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What are the five factors to an individual's social class?
Income, savings, owning or renting a house, hobbies and who they engage with in social activities
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What is one way that can indicate an individual's social class?
Regional dialect/accent
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What can we assume from accents and social class?
Strong regional accents are associated with lower classes
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Give an example
Individuals from areas such as Norwich replace the /iŋ/ phoneme with the /in/ phoneme, pronouncing progressive verbs, for example, ‘walking’ as ‘walkin’, instead of the standard British form where the phonetic /ŋ/ is used which is a velar nasal.
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What theory does this correlate to?
Peter Trudgill in 1974, who investigated the pronunciation of particular variables in different socio-economic status and different speech styles.
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What did he also note?
That within informal situations, there was very little difference between the speech of working and middle class speakers however middle class speakers converged when in formal situations
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What can we assume from this?
Working class care less about convergence and social judgement than middle class speakers
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What other theory can this relate to and what did he find?
Malcolm Petyt in 1985 noted that speakers in the Bradford region omitted the phonetic ‘h’ sound in words such as hat and house
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What did he suggest like Trudgill?
Middle class speakers made conscious effort to avoid omitting the beginning consonant
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What can this imply?
Working class speakers use their regional accent as part of their identity and do not converge when in formal situations, however middle classes are likely to converge, taking a prescriptive approach towards language
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What is a correlation between language and social class?
An individual's complexity in the way they speak
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What can we assume?
That middle class speaker's lang is more complex due to having a higher income and access to prestigious education
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What theory does this link to?
Basil Bernstein’s investigation in to the use of restricted and elaborated code
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What did he suggest?
He suggested that middle class speakers use elaborate code within their language, consisting of extensive and articulate vocabulary and sophisticated syntactic patterns, implying complexity within their communication
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Give an example of this
a parent telling their child a story may add rhetorical questions in the conversation such as “what do you think happens next?” which therefore adds another level to their exchange which is seen as complex
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What else did Bernstein highlight the differences in elaborated and restricted code?
Lexis
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Give an example
a working class speaker may use the lexis ‘purple’ whereas a middle class speaker may use ‘violet’ when describing the colour, demonstrating a difference in complexity.
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What did Bernstein emphasise?
the idea that there needs to be a balance of restricted and elaborated code within language use and also conveyed the idea that speakers often adapt their speech depending on their audience and context
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Name another way in which language is affected by social class?
An individual's social network
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What theory does this relate to and what do they suggest?
Milroy’s Belfast study (2014) suggests that members of a speech community are connected to each other in social networks which may be relatively 'closed' or 'open'.
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What does it mean by an open network?
individual whose contacts tend not to know each other
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What does it mean by a closed network?
A person whose personal contacts all know each other
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Closed networks are said to be of..
Low density
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Open networks are said to be of...
High density
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What did Milroy suggest relating to this social network?
working class communities are said to be of a low density, closed network by using more non-standard grammatical features such as the use of present tense in replacement for past tense, for example, “I come down yesterday.”
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What can we assume from this?
individuals in a working class social group are likely to use non-standard forms when interacting with other members of their social group, and the stronger the social network, the greater the use of vernacular forms
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What did Milroy's findings also suggest?
Gender is a significant factor
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What did they discover?
they discovered that women used fewer vernacular forms than men and preferred to use standard forms instead.In working class, younger women preferred using non-standard forms as a way of demonstrating social solidarity with their unemployed men
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

What are the five factors to an individual's social class?

Back

Income, savings, owning or renting a house, hobbies and who they engage with in social activities

Card 3

Front

What is one way that can indicate an individual's social class?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What can we assume from accents and social class?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

Give an example

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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