Social Class theories

• Overt Prestige


  The prestige associated with observing perceived social norms and behaving in a socially desirable manner, such as using standard forms of language
• Covert Prestige


  The use of non-standard colloquial language to gain status amongst a particular social group
• Trudgill's Norwich study


  • Changing the velar nasal to an alveolar, e.g. runnin was more common in working class speech than middle class speech
• Elaborated code


  Language middle class people use which can give them advantages in everyday life
• Restricted code


  Language working class people use which can disadvantage them in everyday life
• Labov's New York study

  • Speakers in the more prestigious stores who were aspiring to use a prestige accent used a post-vocalic r
• Social network theory


  Patterns of connections amongst people affects their social behaviour and communication, including density (number of connections within a social network) and multiplexity (number of connections to the same people)
• Milroy's Belfast study

  • Those within a high density network had stronger regional accent due to strong community ties, with those who were isolated having less strong accents
• Open social networks


  Where connections do not know each other
• Closed social networks


  Where connections do know each other
• Petyt's Bradford study


  • H-dropping occurred 93% of the time in lower working classes and 12% in upper middle classes
  • Hyper correction: upper classes put the 'h' in 'hour'
• Social mobility


  The idea that we can move up and down social classses
• Linguistic capital


  Shared by upper classes, can link to other types of capital like economic or social
• Chomsky's universal grammar disputes the idea of social class differentiation
• Sapir


  Culture can impact language, which can be intercultural but also intracultural, i.e. between social classes