Language and Class

12 Key excerpts on "Language and Class"

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  The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics

  • Rajend Mesthrie(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  One of these, the definition of class, is specific to this field, and will be discussed at length in the next section. But the other three Language, social class, and status 161 each reflect general problems for linguistics. They are the description of language use, the explanation of language change, and the construction of linguistic theory. Class is involved in the description of language use for the most obvi- ous of reasons: the existence of social variation in language. Linguists have not yet achieved even a minimal observational level of adequacy in respect of sociolinguistic variation, and class will be an important dimension in the organization and explanation of these facts. Class is involved in the study of language change because of the long-recognized link between social change and linguistic change. Many linguistic inno- vations can now be shown to have been socially motivated, to have origi- nated in a particular class, and to have spread through society along predictable social lines. And class is relevant to the construction of lin- guistic theory because of the relevance of sociolinguistic variation to the definition of the object of study and the competence–performance distinction. The “orderly heterogeneity” which appears in class variation in language use reveals a communicative competence which must be incorporated in our theoretical accounts. These three areas, each a cen- tral problem for modern linguistics, will be the focus of the last three sections of this chapter. 10.3 Defining class One of the problems facing researchers dealing with these issues is the definition of class. While our social intuitions about differences in sta- tus and power may enable us to distinguish professionals from unskilled laborers, or white-collar workers from blue-collar, they are not adequate for empirical research. More objective definitions of the categories are required. While such definition is fundamental to our enterprise, it is hardly uncontroversial.

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  Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics

  • J.L. Mey(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier Science

    (Publisher)

  C Class Language A Luke , University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia P Graham , University of Waterloo, Canada ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The relationship between language and social class is a key theoretical and empirical issue in critical dis-course studies, ethnography of communication, and sociolinguistic research. It has been a focal point for postwar and current policy in language planning, and language and literacy education. The central questions of a class analysis of language were stated in Mey’s (1985) proposal for Marxian pragmatics: ‘Whose language’ counts? With what material and social consequences? For which communities and so-cial groups? Central concerns are how language fac-tors into the intergenerational reproduction of social and economic stratification, and how communities, families, schools, the media, and governments con-tribute to ‘‘linguistic inequality’’ (Hymes, 1996). Yet current research continues to table and debate con-tending definitions of language and social class as social and economic phenomena. Marx viewed language as an intrinsic characteristic of human ‘species being,’ as a form of mental and material labor. The ‘‘language of real life,’’ he argued, is ‘‘directly interwoven’’ with ‘‘material activity and . . . mental intercourse’’ (Marx and Engels, 1845/1970: 118). This ‘‘mental production’’ is ‘‘expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, meta-physics etc. of a people.’’ ‘Sense experience,’ the work of the eye and ear, was the basis not only of science, but of communal and social life (Marx, 1844/1964: 160–166). At the same time, Marx’s (Marx and Engels, 1845/1970: 37) classical definition of ideology as a ‘camera obscura’ established the centrality of language in the distortion and misrepresentation of social and economic reality in social class interests ( see Marxist Theories of Language ). Marxist theory establishes three critical traditions in the analysis of Language and Class.

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  Social Class in Applied Linguistics

  • David Block(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3 SOCIAL CLASS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS Introduction

  Given its strong historical links to the social sciences, and sociology especially, sociolinguistics has always been uniquely positioned to incorporate social class as a key construct, far more than other areas of applied linguistics. And many early sociolinguists were drawn to social class as a construct central to understandings of the social life of language use, following dominant trends in sociology in the 1960s, when it was a key construct. Still, as I will argue at the end of this chapter, in recent years there has been something of a shift away from social class in terms of its importance as a construct and in some cases outright erasure. In the sections that follow, I propose to take the reader through some of the key sociolinguistics research that has had social class at its centre, critiquing this work as I proceed. I end with some suggestions about future research. First, however, I would like to clarify what I mean when I make reference to the term ‘sociolinguistics’.

  In an early sociolinguistics textbook entitled Sociolinguistics: An Introduction, Peter Trudgill describes what he calls ‘sociolinguistics proper’ as follows:

  This covers studies of language in its social context which (whether they be sociological, anthropological or geographical in emphasis) are mainly concerned with answering questions of interest to linguistics, such as how can we improve our theories about the nature of language, and how and why does language change.

  (Trudgill, 1974a: 33)

  Subsequently, Trudgill goes on to discuss the interaction between language and social class, language and ethnic group, language and sex, language and context, language and nation and language and geography, exploring, as he does all of this, ‘the ways in which society acts upon language and, possibly, in which language acts upon society … [and] the number of ways in which language and society are interrelated’ (Trudgill, 1974a: 32). Significantly, ‘language’ always comes first in chapter titles, which is consistent with the linguistics-centric approach to sociolinguistics that is integral to Trudgill’s notion of ‘sociolinguistics proper’.

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  Language, Society and Power

  An Introduction

  • Annabelle Mooney, Betsy Evans(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 9Language, class and symbolic capital

  9.1 INTRODUCTION 9.2 WHAT IS SOCIAL CLASS? 9.3 ATTITUDES TO CLASS 9.4 LINGUISTIC VARIATION 9.5 INTERSECTION OF SOCIAL CLASS AND OTHER VARIABLES 9.6 SOCIAL NETWORKS 9.7 COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE 9.8 SYMBOLIC CAPITAL 9.9 REVISING THE BRITISH SOCIAL CLASS MODEL 9.10 SUMMARY

  9.1 Introduction

  In this chapter, we explore social class and symbolic capital . The reason for considering both together is twofold. First, social class is notoriously difficult to define. Second, in order to fully understand the effects of class and the power it may bring, it’s important to engage with the notion of symbolic capital. Objective definitions of class don’t always explain language variation. We begin by examining attitudes to class before considering research on the correlation between Language and Class. We then consider social networks and communities of practice in order to see that language use and symbolic capital may be rather more local than traditional definitions of class suggest. Finally, we examine a recent model of class that gives symbolic capital a central place.

  9.2 What is Social Class?

  Social class has long been associated with how much money a person has. That is, the amount of money a person possesses or can earn may place a person in a particular position in a social class hierarchy. However, this relationship has been complicated by the fact that the possession of money no longer relies on being born into a particular family or pursuing a particular profession. While personal wealth can still be considered one of the factors that contribute to the perception of ‘class’, other factors, such as education, where someone lives and, of course, the language a person speaks play an important role in the perception of social class.

  Many people think that social class is no longer relevant. However, even in societies presented as lacking social class distinctions, it can still be found. In Denmark, like other Scandinavian countries, there is a strong ideology of egalitarianism. As Ladegård puts it, ‘Denmark … is often presented as a country in which social class distinctions are virtually non-existent’ (1998: 183). To investigate this, Ladegård recorded people using different regional varieties of Danish, as well as ‘Standard Danish’. He then asked informants to listen to the voices and rate their intelligence, education, socio-economic status, reliability, friendliness, sense of humour and so on (1998: 187). Significant differences in evaluation emerged across all categories. Standard Danish scored well across all domains, as did a variety known as High Copenhagen. The difference in evaluation of these two varieties compared to all others, however, across all domains, was significant. Ladegård observes,

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  Labov: A Guide for the Perplexed

  • Matthew J. Gordon(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  There is still a good deal LABOV 136 of truth to the traditional quip that most Americans think they’re middle class. 2 The difficulty that my students and others have in coming to grips with class reflects J. K. Chambers’s observation that class is an “inherently fuzzy” concept, especially in comparison to other variables that sociolinguists examine such as age and sex (2008, p. 40). In industrialized societies we recognize a basic division between the working and middle classes, often coded in the metonyms “blue collar” and “white collar” from the attire suited to work in a factory versus an office. These labels reflect the salience of occupation as an element of social class. To be sure, job categories offer a more productive way of approaching class than wealth or income. After all, many college professors earn less than many plumbers, but a professor represents the middle class and a plumber the working class. Still, social class is about more than one’s profession. It typically functions as a pervasive cultural divide that shapes our lives in various tangible and intangible ways. Of concern here are the ways that class shapes our language. Sociolinguistic research has revealed that class-based variation is widespread and manifest in a range of linguistic dimensions. Variationist studies have commonly focused on phonological and grammatical variables in exploring the influence of class, but other research has examined class in terms of broader discourse patterns. 3 Social stratification by class has been central to Labov’s research agenda since his New York City study. This work has not only led to a greater appreciation for the complex role of class in linguistic variation, but it has also informed crucial aspects of Labov’s broader thinking about language, including his conception of speech community and his understanding of the forces driving linguistic change.

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  Language, Society and Power

  An Introduction

  • Annabelle Mooney, Betsy Evans(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 9 Language, Class, and Symbolic Capital

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003120957-9

  CONTENTS

  9.1 INTRODUCTION

  9.2 WHAT IS ‘SOCIAL CLASS’?

  9.3 ATTITUDES TO CLASS

  9.4 LINGUISTIC VARIATION

  9.5 INTERSECTION OF SOCIAL CLASS AND OTHER VARIABLES

  9.6 SOCIAL NETWORKS

  9.7 COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

  9.8 SYMBOLIC CAPITAL

  9.9 REVISING THE BRITISH SOCIAL CLASS MODEL

  9.10 SUMMARY

  9.1 INTRODUCTION

  In this chapter, we explore social class and symbolic capital. The reason for considering both together is twofold. First, social class is notoriously difficult to define. Second, in order to fully understand the effects of class and the power it may bring, it’s important to engage with the notion of symbolic capital. Objective definitions of class don’t always explain language variation. We begin by examining attitudes to class before considering research on the correlation between Language and Class. We then consider social networks and communities of practice in order to see that language use and symbolic capital may be rather more local than traditional definitions of class suggest. Finally, we examine a recent model of class that gives symbolic capital a central place.

  9.2 WHAT IS ‘SOCIAL CLASS’?

  Social class has long been associated with how much money a person has. That is, the amount of money a person possesses or can earn may place a person in a particular position in a social class hierarchy. However, this relationship has been complicated by the fact that the possession of money no longer relies on being born into a particular family or pursuing a particular profession. While personal wealth can still be considered one of the factors that contribute to the perception of ‘class’, other factors, such as education; where someone lives; and, of course, the language a person speaks play important roles in the perception of social class. As Chun notes, social class is not a ‘thing’; rather, it is a ‘social relationship process in performative motion dynamically shaped by situation contexts’ (2019: 333). This means that class is not something a person is; it is something they do. What this looks and sounds like will depend on the situation and the people present. In this chapter we focus on class in Western countries. However, social class, or something like it, operates in most of the world. As Banda notes, ‘Social class signals, that is, lifestyle statuses (e.g. residing in an upmarket neighbourhood and owning expensive SUVs) and behaviours (e.g. standard speech forms) can provide information about an individual’s earnings, career or employment status, and other dimensions of social class’ (2020: 7).

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  Issues in Sociolinguistics

  • Oscar Uribe-Villegas(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Language can be approached as an act and as a system of signs, as speech and as mother tongue. There are some who believe that o ni y language and not speech can be studied; and there are others who are willing to include in sociology only the study of speech in its social aspect and not the study of language. There are two essential restitutions yet: the one that gives back speech to linguistic and the one that gives to sociology the study of linguistic codes and their validity. Within sociolinguistics fits a 'sociology of language' in a line parallel to the one followed by the sociological studies of the other pattern-forming systems (moral and legal) which would complete the sociology of speech. Only along these lines can an authentic sociolinguistic con-vergence which surpasses the linguist's limitation (he who prefers not to deal with speech) and those of the sociologist (he who banishes the study of language) be attained. Language is a 'corporal technique' which assures communication between speakers. That is why it is convenient to consider the limited form in which this communication aim and possibilities lay unexploited in this technique. Since language is mediator of human interaction its examination can supply clues to discover the true nature of the social factor, especially if one contrasts the relations in which language plays a part with those in which it does not, since this can help to determine if these relations are authentically social or not, and why. 70 Oscar Uribe-Villegas Indeed between the significants and the significances which form a language a relation of biunivocal dependency or of complete deter-mination does not exist. The linguistic sign does not copy the thing but suggests it; it symbolizes it and in doing so it gives it new existence. As things and phenomena are captured through signs, language sociology is the key to penetrate the sociology of knowledge.

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  Introducing Linguistics

  Theoretical and Applied Approaches

  • Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, John W. Schwieter(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  PART 5 LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OVERVIEW The goal of the present chapter is to familiarize you with key concepts and findings in sociolinguistics. More specifically, you will: • learn about language and society; • acquire concepts needed to study variation in the use of language; • discover factors relevant for how different people speak; • discover factors relevant for how individuals vary their speech; and • explore variation in bilingual societies. 9.1 What Is Sociolinguistics? The branch of linguistics which seeks to examine and explain the everyday variation that characterizes human languages is sociolinguistics. Linguistic variation not only refers to the fact that many different languages in the world are spoken by humans, but also refers to the variation within a given language and even within speech communities of that language. In other words, linguistic variation happens at many levels: between languages, within a language, and within individuals who speak those languages. We don’t always express the same information in the same way. You probably already have noticed just by being human that how people speak is based on factors like: • where they are from (regional variation); • who they are (age, gender, socioeconomic status, etc.); • the situation they are in (formal, informal); • their linguistic profile (bilingual, monolingual). Sociolinguistics studies the (often quantitative) relationships that exist between dif- ferent linguistic forms, and social and situational categories. Another way to understand what sociolinguistics investigates is to contrast it with other approaches to language, like structural and prescriptive perspectives. 9 Sociolinguistics Language in Society Terry Nadasdi 328 Sociolinguistics: Language in Society Structural approaches are interested in the invariable properties of language (i.e., what is and isn’t possible in a given language).

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  Teaching and Researching: Language and Culture

  • Joan Kelly Hall(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Incorporation of developments in fields historically considered outside the main purview of applied linguistics has helped the field to reconceptualise two essential concepts: language and culture. In contrast to traditional views, which consider language to be structural systems transcending their users and contexts of use, sociocultural conceptualisations see language as dynamic, living collections of resources for the accomplishment of our social lives. These collections are considered central forms of life in that we use them not only to refer to, or represent, the world in our communicative activities. They are also forms of action by which we bring our cultural worlds into existence, maintain them, and shape them for our own purposes.

  Current understandings have also transformed the way we view language meaning. While we can and do use our resources to realise personal intentions, our intentions alone do not give them their meaning. Nor is meaning inherent in the forms themselves. That is to say, we cannot pull resources from their contexts, dust off any contextual residue, and then claim to know their meaning. Doing so only renders them lifeless. Instead, the meanings that reside in our linguistic resources are dynamic, emerging from the dialogic interaction between our uses of them at particular moments in time, and their conventional meanings, determined by their prior uses by other individuals, in other communicative activities, and at other times. The specific components of language then are considered to be fundamentally communicative, their shapes arising from their uses by individuals to construct and enact certain social identities as they engage in activities particular to their sociocultural worlds.

  Also transformed is our understanding of what it means to know language. From a sociocultural perspective, to know language does not mean to know something about it. It is not a body of information about forms and meanings that we first accumulate and then use in our communicative activities. Rather, to know a language means ‘knowing how to go on, and so is an ability’ (Shotter, 1996

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  For the Love of Language

  An Introduction to Linguistics

  • Kate Burridge, Tonya N. Stebbins(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  ‘LANGUAGE IS A SOCIAL FACT’ VARIATION AND CHANGE PART 4 Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef which is the basis of the continent. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875), ‘Quotation and Originality’, in Letters and Social Aims 10.0 INTRODUCTION People often think about language as fixed. If you play Scrabble and you want to know how to spell a word, you can look it up in the dictionary and there it is – the same as it was 20 years ago when the dictionary was first published. At the same time, people are also highly aware of the ways that speakers differ from each other and the fact that language can change. This causes problems for the ‘language is fixed in time’ model. For people who are committed to this view, change and differences among speakers become a signal of something that is not right – a lack of respect for and awareness of proper language. In this chapter, we will be look- ing a little at the issues to do with language standards, but mostly we want to explore all the different ways in which speakers align themselves with particular habits of using language. In some parts of the world, they can achieve this by switching between languages, but our focus here is on variation within a single language. Never lose sight of the fact that language has two distinct functions. Its primary, or ortho- dox, function is of course to facilitate communication. The other is to promote identity, or in-group solidarity – to preserve a group’s uniqueness or to establish its presence. The impor- tance of this second function should never be under-estimated. Language is a potent sym- bol of a vast array of different affiliations. In addition to regional attachments, these include ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, generation, abilities, appearance and pro- fession.

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  Introducing Sociolinguistics

  • Miriam Meyerhoff(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  These neighbourhood categorisations are used by marketers (they determine what leaflets arrive in your mail) and by teachers, police and other public sector planning groups. They have not yet been widely used in sociolinguistic research, but as social scientists employ greater finesse in identifying social classes we can expect to see benefits flowing on from this to the study of linguistic variation.

  No, really?

  On 25 January 2004, the Observer newspaper in Britain reported a classification system that ranks British households into one of 61 different profiles. Obviously, these get quite detailed and cover only small segments of the population, which then get combined to form larger classes. What is known in Britain as ‘the chattering class(es)’ – that is, people with metropolitan values, attitudes and spending patterns – break down into more specific categories. (Do you feel like you are, or aspire to be, one of these? What do you think of the labels for the groups the marketers have chosen?)

  The New Urban Columnist: Well-qualified young professionals working in occupations such as financial services, PR and the media. Open to new fashions in taste and thinking. Drawn to inner-city life as they find it more stimulating than suburbia.The Counter-Cultural: Young and mobile people in their twenties and thirties. Live on their own or in transient relationships. Many associated with the gay scene. Thoughtful, well educated. Tend to live in areas with a diverse mix of people.The University Challenge: Typically a student. Lives in rented accommodation in areas that come to life in the evening. Displays a strong belief in informality and authenticity.

  Class as a factor in linguistic variation

  We have already seen a lot of evidence that variables are subject to quite systematic stratification in the speech of individuals and groups. For instance, we saw stratification according to speaker style (Chapter 3 ), and stratification according to age (Chapter 7

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  Discovering Sociolinguistics

  From Theory to Practice

  • Dick Smakman(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Coulmas ( 2013 ) indicated that Sociolinguistics is about ‘what it is that speakers do with their language(s); how they pass them on to following generations; how they allow them to be influenced by other languages; how they adjust their speech to that of their interlocutors; and how they interact with speakers of other idioms.’ (xii). To find this out, speakers first and fore-most need to be looked at as individuals continuously triggered by a plethora of influences. The choices each of them makes under these circumstances explain the broader workings of language variation. This chapter discusses four influences on the language from the perspec-tive of individual speakers: who we are, how we view ourselves, how we view others, and who we associate with. Characteristics of people are discussed first (i.e., who we are). First of all, these are features we are born with and that cannot usually be changed, such as age, sexuality, and the way our vocal tract is built. Furthermore, these are features that are imposed in our early lives but that can often be changed in later life, such as social position and place where one lives. After that, identity as part of language is explained (i.e., how we view ourselves) and why we communicate with others in certain situations the way we do (i.e., how we view others). The final type of explanation of an individual’s language use that is discussed is membership of one or more groups of people with whom we share certain language features (i.e., who we associate with). 5 Speaker Agency Language Choices in a Sociolinguistic Space 52 SPEAKER AGENCY 5.2 Who we are 5.2.1 Physiology Speakers have certain characteristics that they are born with: their so-called ‘core identity’ (Friedrich and Diniz de Figueiredo 2016). Our physiology, for one, is a strong determinant of our lives.

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