1. Language and Class

2. Class consciousness
 Raymond Williams & E. P. Thompson
 Each class contains the other(s) within itself, though in
distorted and ambivalent forms … each class views the
others … as images of their hopes and fears for their
own lives and futures … if much of working class
culture can be understood as … embodying the
ambivalence of upward mobility, much of middle-class
culture can be seen as embodying the terror of
downward mobility. (Ortner, 1991)

3. What is social class?
 In everyday use, and even among sociologists, the word
‘class’ is used non-sociologically, meaning ‘a kind of
category’
 ‘A division or order of society according to status; a
rank or grade of society.’ (OED)

4. What is social class?
Objective Subjective
 Applying a criteria of  The individual places
inclusion to an individual in himself/herself in a class
order to place them in a category, regardless of
class category, regardless of whether the researcher
whether the individual thinks they belong in that
thinks they belong in that class category.
class category

5. Low, middle, upper …?
 Your accent
 Where you live  Power
 What you do  Wealth
 What you earn  Prestige
 How much you are worth

6. Class in the UK
 Classless?
 Upper Class  Education
 Income
(http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/)
 Middle class
 Upper middle class  Occupation
 Middle middle class  Wealth
 Lower middle class
 Class Stereotypes
 Working class  Toff
 Skilled working class  Rah
 Unskilled working class  Sloane ranger
 Worcester woman
 Essex man
 Underclass
 White van man
 chav

7. Trudgill: social class dialects
 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.
 ‘Why does social differentiation have this effect on
language?’
 Geographical boundaries
 Social boundaries
 The study of
 Idiolects
 From a study of rural dialects to urban speech communities
 The importance of Labov

8. Trudgill: social class dialects
 The dialect continuum
Highest class: standard dialect
Social variation
Lowest class: most localised non-
standard
Regional variation

9. Trudgill: social class accents
 The accent continuum
Highest class: RP
Social variation
Lowest class: most localised non-
accent
Regional variation

10. Trudgill: dialect correlations
 From hunch to method to correlation to theory
 Explanatory power:
 We know what we are doing when we ascribe social status from
speech
 We learn about social structure from an understanding of language
variation
 Idiolects follow predictable patterns
 It teaches us to be suspicious of stereotypes

11. Trudgill: accent correlations
 Norwich: Trudgill
 Variation across speech styles parallels variation across social
class
 New York: Labov
 Study in 1962 at department stores in New York.

12. The stores
 Saks Fifth Avenue
 At 50th Street and 5th Avenue, near the centre of the high fashion
shopping district
 Macy's
 Herald Square. 34th Street and Sixth Avenue, near the clothing
district
 S. Klein
 Union Square. 14th Street and Broadway, not far from the Lower
East Side

13. The shop assistants
 The interviewer asked:
 Excuse me, where are the (women's shoes)?
 The salesperson answered:
 Fourth floor.
 The interviewer then leaned forward and said:
 Excuse me?
 The salesperson answered:
 Fourth floor.

14. The hunch
 In New York City the pronunciation of postvocalic (r) in
words like “fourth” and “floor” is variable.
 Labov’s hypothesis
 Salespeople in the highest ranked stores will have the most (r),
those in the middle ranked store will have an intermediate value,
and those in the lowest ranked store will have the least.
 Was he right?

15. Conclusions
 There is a sliding up and down between standard and vernacular forms
 The ‘classic sociolinguistic finding’
 People’s pronunciation tends to move closer to higher class speech
styles in formal situations, and closer to lower class styles when
situations are more relaxed.
 Individual variation turns out to be a reflection of the speech
differences that emerge when you survey the class groups in society as
a whole.
 Individuals internalise class hierarchy and act it out in the fine grain of
ordinary life. How?