LING20010 Chap.3 Language and Social Class
Language and Social Class
Class is one of the most widely used social factors in sociolinguistics and one of the hardest to define. This chapter starts with the difference between closed and open stratification and the symbols of class membership, including Received Pronunciation and the cultivated end of the Australian English continuum.
It then compares how studies assigned class: by the prestige of a department store in Labov's New York survey, by a neighbourhood index in Philadelphia, by occupation in Horvath's Sydney study, by students' own labels at Belton High, and by employer type in Beijing. The published store percentages are worked through in full.
Along the way the chapter defines overt and covert prestige, the crossover effect, stable variation such as (ing), and change from above and below, and asks why the interior classes so often lead change.
Finally, it shows how class findings should be reported: with the measure of class stated first, the numbers kept visible, and any oddity in the data, such as a row that does not total exactly 100, explained rather than hidden.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Closed and open stratification
- 02
Objective and subjective measures of class
- 03
The New York department store survey
- 04
The crossover effect
- 05
Change from above and change from below
- 06
Class studies in Philadelphia, Sydney and Beijing
Worked example · free
Read the r-less end of the store percentages
- 1Order the stores by prestige: Saks, then Macy's, then S. Klein.
- 1Subtract: 70% minus 32% gives a gap of 38 percentage points in r-less clerks.
- 1Interpret: r-lessness rises as store prestige falls, so the prestige variant tracks the social level of the store.
Key terms
- Crossover effect
- The crossover effect is a pattern in which a lower class uses a prestige variant more than the class above it in careful styles.
- Change from above
- Change from above is change that speakers are aware of and may adopt to signal status.
- Change from below
- Change from below is change that happens beneath the level of social consciousness in a community.
- Stable variation
- Stable variation is variation with no evidence that one variant is replacing the other over time.
Language and Social Class FAQ
How did Labov decide which class a clerk belonged to?
He did not measure the clerks individually. He ranked three stores by prestige, using their address, the newspapers they advertised in and their prices, and treated each store's staff as representing that social level.
Why is (ing) called a stable variable?
It varies in every English studied so far, the velar nasal is always the higher-status variant, and there is no evidence that one form is replacing the other. It varies with group membership and style and can change across a person's life.
Who tends to lead linguistic change by class?
Labov's Philadelphia study found the interior classes, the lower middle and upper working classes, leading several vowel changes, while speakers in the higher classes were often not the innovators. The lecture leaves the reason as a question to think through.
What is covert prestige?
It is the local value of forms the wider society looks down on. A working-class accent can signal toughness, and stigmatised forms such as negative concord survive because they carry that meaning among the people who use them.
Assessment move
For every class study, write one line each for the variable, how class was assigned and the finding; the comparison grid in this chapter is a model. Then practise reading the store table aloud as sentences, because a results paragraph needs the same moves: state the numbers, keep the pattern visible and say what unit the class measure applies to.
Learn the four change terms as two pairs, above versus below and stable versus changing, and attach one example to each. If your project uses class, decide early whether you are using an objective measure, a subjective one or both, and say why in your methods section.
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