social class

• Received pronunciation (RP)

  • An accent that came to be viewed as a prestige form in English during the early part of the 20th century
  • standard form of British English pronunciation based on educated speech in southern England
  • widely accepted elsewhere
• standard english 


  the variety of english that is generally accepted to be the norm and generally held up to be what users of the language should be taught and become competent in
• covergence, divergence

  • convergence - speakers come to sound more alike
  • divergence - speakers sound more unlike
  • upward - move towards standard english
  • downward - move towards more non-standard english
• Labov - prestige

  • overt prestige = a form of status valued and shared by mainstream society and culture
  • covert prestige = a form of status shared by minority groups in society, usually with alternative or opposing values to mainstream society
• Labov - New York study 1

  • early 1960s
  • labov was interested in pronunciation features, not grammar or vocab, because he believed that pronunciation is a more fine grade indicator of social differences
  • he identified the way particular forms seem to be attached to specific socio-economic class
  • research th phoneme
• Labov New York Study 1 - findings

  • he grouped people into different sections via wealth
  • most affluent new yorkers - pronounced th
  • least affluent new yorkers - would use t form
  • those in between - blend of t-th
• LAbov - Department store study

  • 1966 new york study
  • studied how often the final or preconsonantal r was sounded in words like beer etc
  • speech of sales assistants in Manhattan stores, drawn from the top (Saks), middle (Macys) bottom (kleins) of price and fashion scale
  • asked question to elicit the answer 'fourth floor' and pretended not to have heard it to get the participant to repeat it
  • frequency of the use of the prestige r varied with level of formality and social class
• Labov - department store study findings

  • sales assistant from saks used it most, kleins used it least, and macys showed greatest number of upward shift when asked to repeat
  • lower middle class were susceptible to overt prestige of r - they differed most between incidence of casual speech (4%) to careful speech (77%)
  • upper class differed least between casual (19%) and careful speech (60%) - were less susceptible to prestige form
  • all 3 lower classes were more aware of prestige of r and wanted to change the way they speak to reflect how posh people sound
• Peter Trudgill - Norwich study

  • 1974
  • analysed the use of different pronunciations of the verbal suffix -ing (going, running) which alternates between standard velar consonant ng and nonstandard n - know as dropping your g's
  • constructed a sample of speakers stratified by age, gender, and social class using a composite index covering occupational status, fathers occupation, education, income, housing type (good method)
  • used 4 different contexts to gather data - reading a word list, reading a passage, formal convo, casual convo (sliding scale of formality)
• Trudgills Norwich study - findings

  • responded to the world list as highly formalised (observers paradox) and casual convo was most informal context
  • findings show a clear curve in frequency of non-standard usage in relation to social class
  • involved gender - women used non-standard varients less frequently
• Petyt - Hypercorrection

  • Bradford, west Yorkshire
  • omission of initial h sound
  • measured the frequency of h-dropping across social classes in Bradford
  • lower the class the more likely the h sound
• Petyt - Hypercorrection findings

  • UMC - 12%
  • LMC - 28%
  • UWC - 67%
  • MWC - 89%
  • LWC - 93%

  (% of h dropped)
• Jenny Cheshire - grammatical variants

  • 1980s
  • reading
  • she constructed her own concept of social class when focusing on girls
  • Group A - expressed disapproval of participation in minor criminal activities, carrying weapons, fighting and swearing (middle class)
  • Group B - approved of these things (working class)
  • identified non-standard features and measured the frequency of use of these in speech
  • teenage girls 14-16
• Non-standard grammatical variants used in reading study

  • has (you has to do)
  • 's' (they calls me)
  • 'never' (I never did that)
  • what (ones what hit him)
  • ain't (you ain't my mother)
  • double neg (they ain't got no)
  • was (you was with me)
  • come (I come down)
• Cheshire - reading study - findings

  • 5 - working class non standard varient use
  • 3 - middle class
• Bernstein - Elaborated and restricted code

  • believed there are 2 types of 'code' that can be used to communicate
  • restricted code - uses more conjunctions, context-dependent language and non-standard syntax - uses fewer words to convey a large amount of meaning when there is shared knowledge
  • elaborated code - uses more standard English and spells everything out in great detail because it is necessary for everyone to understand
  • method - he showed a group of kids a cartoon strip and recorded their account of what they depicted
• Bernstein - elaborated and restricted code findings

  • working-class students had access to restricted code
  • middle-class students had access to both as they were more socially, and geographically, culturally mobile
  • research showed if you can't handle elaborated code you aren't going to succeed in education system
  • later changed his view to say that even working-class kids may sometimes use elaborated code