Language Diversity - Social Class

Question 1

The idea that language is determined by social class has been studied by many researchers. Who researched this in the 1960’s, and what did they discover?

Answer 1

Bernstein made a correlation between social class and the use of either elaborated or restricted code.

Question 2

How did Bernstein discover that children from different social classes would speak differently?

Answer 2

Bernstein showed a storyboard to students in two different social classes and asked them to describe the events in the storyboard.

Question 3

What were Bernstein’s Findings?

Answer 3

It was found that those in a lower social class would use a restricted code with lots of deixis useful for reinforcing group membership but is limited as to who can understand what is being said. Contrastingly, students of a middle social class used an elaborated code which involved lots of context independent language.

Question 4

What were some features of the restricted code (lower social class)?

Answer 4

context bound language, simple and compound sentences

Question 5

What were some features of the elaborated code (middle social class)?

Answer 5

full and often complex sentences, connected ideas and broader vocabulary

Question 6

Who Criticised Bernsteins research? What did they argue?

Answer 6

Labov criticised Bernstein’s ideas as it suggested that working class speech was inferior to middle class speech, therefore judging the speaker rather than unfair class barriers.

Question 7

What did Labov say about language and class?

Answer 7

Labov’s findings were about how working and middle class students express their opinions about abstract ideas.

Question 8

What did Labov use for research?

Answer 8

Labov reviewed an interview between two people, a gang member and someone of a higher social class.

Question 9

What did Labov find out about middle class speech?

Answer 9

Labov found that in the middle class speech, there was nothing that was restricted, and that he was able to use more of a wide lexical range.

Question 10

What did labov find out about the gang member’s speech? the gang member used repetitive vocabulary, hedges and is verbose

Answer 10

the gang member used repetitive vocabulary, hedges and is verbose

Question 11

So what does Labov’s research indicate?

Answer 11

Therefore Labov’s research indicates the perception that social class impacts language use derives from our negative associations with working class behaviours.

Question 12

Who says that a person’s social class can determine other aspects of their language, such as phonological features?

Answer 12

Trudgill

Question 13

Trudgill conducted an experiment involving 5 classes, what are they?

Answer 13

middle middle class, lower middle class, upper working class, middle working class and lower working class

Question 14

In addition to the 5 social groups (Trudgill) there were 4 spoken contexts, what are they?

Answer 14

wordlist, passage, formal conversation and casual conversation

Question 15

What sound did Trudgill specifically focus on?

Answer 15

Trudgill looked at the ng sound in the Norwich dialect to see how different classes used the word ending -ng.

Question 16

What were Trudgill’s findings?

Answer 16

100% of middle class women used standard ing forms. However this is contrasted by the fact that 0% of lower working class men used the standard -ing forms.

Question 17

What did Trudgill find out about the use of non standard -in’ forms?

Answer 17

Overall, the proportion of non standard -in’ forms was higher in lower social classes. The non standard -in’ forms occurred much more often in men’s speech than in women’s and this was true for all social classes. In all social classes, the more careful the speech, the more likely people were to say walking rather than walkin’.

Question 18

What did people say they thought they were saying?

Answer 18

When women were asked what they thought they were saying, they tended to say they used the standard -ing forms more often than they really did (overt prestige). Men tended to say they thought they used the -in’ forms more often than they did (covert prestige).

Question 19

What does Trudgill’s study show?

Answer 19

Trudgill’s study shows there is a clear link between social class, gender and context in the use of non-standard forms.