Social status

As far as British English is concerned, linguists have known for a long time that different dialects and accents are related to differences of the social-class background. In Britain, we can describe the situation today in a somewhat simplified way. Conservative, and, in particular, rural dialects are old fashioned. They are associated with groups lowest in the social hierarchy. They may change gradually as one is moving across the countryside. The travelling of two persons from Norfolk into Suffolk is equally valid for their journey from Cornwall to Aberdeen: in any part of the country there exists a whole series of different dialects, which gradually merge into one another. This is termed dialect continuum - a large number of different but not usually distinct nonstandard dialects connected by a chain of similarity, but with the dialects at either end of the chain being very dissimilar.

At the top of the pyramid (given below) scholars single out one dialect which is usually equal to some standard, but branches into dialects as soon as we go down to the bottom of the figure. They spring and develop in different spatial areas (as Estuary English, for example), or social and professional groups at factories, educational, social, cultural, or religious organisations). The lower one goes along the scale the societal hierarchy, the more dialects he will come across.

Highest class: Standard English dialect

Lowest class: most localized non-standard dialects

Figure 1. Social and regional dialect variation

One lexical example can be portrayed in Figure I. There is in the Standard English dialect a single word scarecrow signifying the humanoid object, which farmers place in fields to scare off birds. At the other end of the pyramid, on the other hand, we find a number of words in the most localized regional English dialects. Corresponding to scarecrow we discover bogle, flay-crow, mawpin, mawkin, bird-scarer, moggy, shay, guy, bogey man, shuft, rook-scarer, and several others.

The same sort of pattern is also found with grammatical differences. In Standard English, for example, we find both:

He's a man who likes his beer; and

He's a man that likes his beer.

But regional variation in nonstandard varieties is much greater. All the given below are possible:

Highest class RP

Lowest class: most localized accent regional variations:

Figure 2 Social and regional accent variation

He's a man who likes his beer.

He's a man that likes his beer.

He's a man at likes his beer.

He's a man as likes his beer.

He's a man what likes his beer.

He's a man he likes his beer.

He's a man likes his beer.

As far as accent is concerned, the situation is slightly different, as portrayed in Figure 2, because of the unique position ofRP. (This is not to say that there is no variation withinRP, but what there is generally is not regionally determined.) This means that at any given point in England, and at least in parts of the rest of the United Kingdom, there is a continuum of accents ranging fromRP, through various local accents, to the most localized accent associated with the lowest social class.

Table 3 illustrates this situation as it affects the pronunciation of one word home. On the top line of this table there is only one variant, while there are eight on the bottom line. On the second line, moreover, the presence of [ho:m] in both Edinburgh and Newcastle, and, particularly, of (houm] in both Liverpool and Bradford, indicates the way in which certain non-RP pronunciations acquire the status of less locally restricted, regional standard pronunciations in various parts of the country.

Figure 3. Local accents.

English sociolinguists have known for a long time about this kind of social and regional dialect and accent variations, and they have also been fairly well provided with the descriptions of RP. They have not known, however, exactly how RP and the intermediate and most localized accents are related to social classes; how far RP extends down the social scale in different places; what kind of speaker uses the regional standard pronunciation; and exactly what the intermediate and localized accents are like? Linguists are now in a position to begin to answer these questions.

If we are to obtain a correct picture of the relationship between language and social stratification we must be able to measure both linguistic and social phenomena so that we can correlate the two accurately. As far as social class is concerned this can be done relatively easily (it is still far from simple) by the sociological method of assigning individuals a numerical index score on the basis of their occupational, income, educational or other characteristics, and then grouping them together.

Measuring language is more difficult. The solution developed by Labov and since then used by other linguists to take linguistic features, which are known to vary within the community, and which are also easily countable in some way. For instance, in two separate surveys, one in Detroit, USA, and one in Norwich England, the same grammatical feature appeared to be suitable in this way. In Standard English the third-person present-tense singular form of the verbs has an affix, orthographic -s, which distinguishes it from other persons: I know, we know, they know, but she knows. In East Anglia, the area of England in which Norwich is situated, and in Detroit this -s is often not present, at least in the speech of some people. This means that the following forms occur:

He like ham very much.

She don't know a lot, do she?

It go ever so fast.

Since Standard English has the -s, and since the standard variety is generally most closely associated with higher social groups, it is suspected that there might be a direct correlation between social-class position and the usage of -s. To investigate this possibility is relatively easy, since there is no difficulty in measuring this linguistic feature: it is a matter of listening to tape-recordings made during the surveys and counting the number of times a speaker did or did not use –s. The relationship is obvious - but what exactly is the value of this kind of information?

First, it shows precisely what sort of information we are working with when we assign a social status to a speaker on the basis of linguistic evidence. Through our linguistic experience we have become sensitive, normally subconsciously, to co-relations of this type between social class and standard or local linguistic forms.

Secondly, it tells us a little about the social structure of the two communities. In both cases, by far the biggest gap exists between the lower middle class (LMC) and the upper working class (UWC). This suggests that the division of society into two main class groups, 'middle class' and 'working class' is the division made largely on the basis of difference between manual and non-manual occupations. This is of some validity and importance, since their social barrier is clearly reflected in the language.

Thirdly, it illustrates the point made above about the idiolect. Although individuals sometimes use one verb form, and sometimes another, the average percentage for each group falls into quite a predictable pattern.

Finally, it tells us a lot about social-class dialects. Even though we are concentrating on only one feature rather than on a variety as a whole, it is still apparent that, like regional dialects, social-class dialects are not distinct entities. They merge into each other to form a continuum. We can talk of 'the middle-working-class Norwich dialect', but if we do we must be very clear: a) that our division into five social classes may be arbitrary; b) that the linguistic differences involved are simply relative and involve the frequency of occurrence of particular features; and c) that the results may differ if other linguistic variables are taken.

Popular stereotypes of social-class dialects are therefore almost always misleading: it is not accurate, for example, to make statements like, ‘ The Detroit Black dialect has no third-person marker on the present-tense verbs. ' Detroit Blacks of all social classes use forms both of the it go and of the it goes type - it is only the proportions, which are different.

Now, the situation portrayed in both the above cases could be regarded as being a case of dialect mixture. We could say, that in the first case what we are really faced with is two different dialects, one with and the other without the -s. We could then state that these two separate dialects are mixed in different proportions by speakers from different classes.

This may in fact be a valid historical explanation of how this situation arose in the first place. It will look objective to describe the present-day situation as a case of inherent variability (at least in Norwich; the position in Detroit is less clear). Inherent (неотъемлемый) variability means that the variation is not due to the mixture of two or more varieties but is an integral part of the variety itself. Thus, according to the 'dialect-mixture view' Detroit Black speakers vary their verb forms because they mix Detroit Black English (which in its 'pure' form does not have -s) with Standard English (which does). According to the 'inherent variability view', on the other hand, this variation is simply one characteristic of Detroit Black English. The evidence for this second view is that this kind of variation takes place on a very wide scale, involving all speakers and a very large number of other linguistic features. More tellingly, this kind of variability is found even in the speech of very young children who have not been exposed to other dialects. Linguistic varieties appear to be inherently variable as a rule rather than as an exception, and inherent variability is probably the linguistic counterpart of social heterogeneity.

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