Social class stratification

Lecture 3. Language and Social Class

1. Social class stratification.

2. English speaking class society.

3. Dialectological researches.

4. Dialects in Great Britain (social status).

5. RP in Great Britain.

6. Linguistic variation of Standard English.

Social class stratification.

If you are an English speaker you will be able to estimate the social status (i.e. the relative position in society) of the following speakers entirely on the basis of the linguistic evidence given here:

Speaker A. I done it yesterday. He ain't got it. It was her what said it.

Speaker B. I did it yesterday. He hasn't got it. It was her that said it.

If you heard these speakers say these things you would suppose that B is of higher social status than A, and you are right. How is it that we can come to such a conclusion? The answer lies in the existence of language varieties, which are called social-class dialects.

First, there are grammatical differences in the speech patterns of these two interlocutors which give us clues about their social backgrounds. Second, it is also probable that these differences should be accompanied by phonetic differences, producing social-class accents. Third, the internal differentiation of human societies is reflected in their languages. Different social groups use different linguistic varieties, and experienced members of the English speech community have learnt to classify the speakers accordingly. Let us remember that a dialect, restricted to a certain area or locale, is a geographical dialect; one spoken by a specific group of people of a similar level of education, social class, or occupation is a social dialect.

It is clear that social differentiation has some effect on the language. In addition, we can notice parallels between the development of social and regional dialects: in the way that barriers and distance appear to be relevant..Dialectologists have found that the regional dialect boundaries coincide with geographical barriers, such as mountains, swamps, rivers, etc. For example, all local dialect speakers in the areas of the north of the River Humber (between Lincolnshire and Yorkshire) still have a monophthong [u:] in the words like house ( [hu:s]), whereas speakers south of the River have had the diphthong [æu], something like [hæusJ for several hundred years. It also seems that the greater is the geographical distance between the two dialects the more dissimilar they are linguistically: for instance, those regional varieties of British English, which are most unlike the speech of London are undoubtedly those of the north-east of Scotland (Buchan, for example).

The development of social varieties can perhaps be explained in the same way, i.e. in the terms of social barriers and social distance. The diffusion of a linguistic feature through society may be halted by barriers of the social class, age, race, religion or other factors. And a social distance may have the same sort of effect as a geographical one: a linguistic innovation that begins amongst, say, the highest social group will affect the lowest social group last, if at all.

Of many forms of social differentiation, for example by class, age, sex, race or religion, we shall concentrate on the social differentiation illustrated in the example of speakers A and B – i.e. social stratification. This is a term used to refer to any hierarchical organization of groups within a society. In the industrialized societies of the West this takes the form of social class stratification, and gives rise linguistically to social-class dialects. Here social classes are taken as aggregates of individuals with similar social, professional, and economic characteristics.

Social-class stratification is not universal, however. In India, for example, traditional society is stratified into different castes. As far as the linguist is concerned, caste dialects are in some ways easier to study and describe than social-class dialects. This is because castes are relatively stable, clearly named groups, rigidly separated from each other, with hereditary (наследственный) membership and with little possibility of movement from one caste to another. Because of this rigid separation into distinct groups, caste-dialect differences tend to be relatively clear-cut, and social differences in language are sometimes greater than regional differences.

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