Language and Social Class
Presented to : Ma’am Shagufta
Presented by: Asia Noor Ilyas
Nadia Tahir
Dialects
• Grammatical Difference
• Phonetic and phonological Difference
• Why does social differentiation have this
effect on language?
Varieties
Regional varieties Social varieties
Geographical Class
differences Age
Religion
Occupation
Raciality or
ethnicity
Cultural
background
Education etc.
It is a term used to refer to any hierarchical
ordering of groups within a society especially
in terms of power, wealth and status.
Caste dialects
Centered upon same area
Going through traditions after traditions
Stable
Little possibility of movement among
classes.
• In class societies of English speaking world
Social situation Linguistic situation
is fluid is rather complex to
Not clearly defined define.
Social mobility exists Heterogeneity exists.
Dialectologists concentrated on rural informants
Jack Chambers introduced
NORMS Non-mobile Older Rural Males
Why males?
• Why dialectologists concentrated on rural
areas?
There are two explanations.
• Analyze variety of accents
• Locate real or pure dialect
Dialectologists realized that they were obtaining
imperfect and inaccurate picture of different
areas.
• Linguistic Atlas of US and Canada 1930
Education
Social dimension
Linguistic information
villages towns
Speech of New York city
Pronunciation of English in San Francisco
William Labov’s Study
• In 1966 “Social stratification of English in
New York city”
• Methodology:
Sample: 349 informants
Sample design: random sampling
Tape recorded interviews
Methods Develops
• Labov developed and refined his techniques
for normal speech from people.
• He developed methods for quantitative
measurements of linguistic data.
Significant Study
• Labov’s methods proved to be significant for
the study of social class dialects and accents.
• His study is significant because dialectologists
had focused on rural speakers and ignored
social factors.
• In dialectologists view urban accents were too
heterogeneous.
• 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.
Britain socio-regional dialect variation
Highest class: standard dialect
Social variation
Lowest class: most
localized non standard
Regional
variation
Social and Regional Accents Variation
Highest class: RP
Social variation
Lowest
class:most
localized accents
Regional
variation
To show language social stratification
we need to measure
1. Social class 2. Language
Assign individual a index Solution by Labov
score. Make class on the basis of
Basis of assignment are language
• Occupational Highest class would be
native speaker.
• Income
• Education etc.
Group them together and
make a class
Sum up
Barriers and distance appear to be relevant in
social and geographical boundaries.
As the heterogeneity in the society increases,
heterogeneity in the language also increases.
Difference in dialects and accents are related
to difference in social class and background.
Idiolect might appear random but speech
community is quite predictable.
All regional dialects, social-class dialects are
not distinct, they merge to form continuum.
Conclusion
• The division into social classes may be arbitrary.
• Linguistic differences are relative and involves frequency
of occurrence of features.
• There may be other differing results if other linguistic
variables are taken.
• The focus of the study involving the sociolinguistic
variable in not analyzing the correlation with linguistic
variable. ( it is the start).
