Language and Social Class

• Social Class: ‘A division or order of society according

to status; a rank or grade of society.’
• What is social class?
• Objective: Applying a criteria of inclusion to an
individual in order to place them in a class category,
regardless of whether the individual thinks they
belong in that class category.
• Subjective: The individual places himself/herself in a
class category, regardless of whether the researcher
thinks they belong in that class category.
• Your accent
• Where you live
• What you do
• What you earn
• How much you are worth
• Power
• Wealth
• Prestige
• New York Department Stores Study
• Labov explored link between incidence of /r/ producing
and social class
• /r/ production = prestige (in NY)
• Visited:
• Sacks (upper class)
• Macy’s (middle class)
• S. Klein (lower class)
• Studied casual and emphatic use of post vocalic ‘r’ in the
response, ‘The fourth floor.’
• The interviewer asked:
Excuse me, where are the (women's shoes)?
• The salesperson answered:
Fourth floor.
• The interviewer then leaned forward and said:
Excuse me?
• The salesperson answered:
Fourth floor.
• In New York City the pronunciation of postvocalic
(r) in words like “fourth” and “floor” is variable.
• Labov’s hypothesis
• Salespeople in the highest ranked stores will have
the most (r), those in the middle ranked store will
have an intermediate value, and those in the
lowest ranked store will have the least.
• Was he right?
• Peter Trudgill (1974):British sociolinguist
• Study of social class and regional dialect Research into
both phonological and grammatical variables in Norwich
• Used five social class divisions:
• LWC (Lower Working Class)
• MWC (Middle Working Class)
• UWC (Upper Working Class)
• LMC (Lower Middle Class)
• MMC (Middle Middle Class)
• Phonological Variables
• Study of the realisation of:
• Word final /ng/ as in RP singing
• Word medial /t/ as in RP bottle
• Word initial /h/ as in the RP heart
• Related findings to gender
• Related findings to careful and casual usage
• Trudgill’s findings…
• The lower the social class the more frequent the
regional pronunciation
• Women tended to be closer to RP than regional
pronunciation (insecurity?)
• In casual speech MMC men preferred the
regional forms (macho connotations?)
• In careful speech MMC men preferred RP forms
• Petyt’s study: Bradford
• Socioeconomic group
• h-dropping
• UMC 12%
• LMC 28%
• UWC 67%
• MWC 89%
• LWC 93%
• Social Classes in Pakistan:
• 1. Upper social class
a) Upper Upper Class
b) Upper Middle Class
c) Upper Lower Class
• 2. Middle social class
a) Middle Upper Class
b) Middle Middle Class
c) Middle Lower Class
• 3. Working social class
a) Lower Upper Class
b) Lower Middle Class
c) Lower Lower Class
• Social Classes in Pakistan
• 1. Upper social class:
i. They have high level of income and belong to be most high
paying profession.
ii. They live in the most cleanest place of the country
iii. Their size is 2% of the total society.
They include:
a. Top management of the company
b. Big businessmen
c. High status leadership
• 2. Middle social class:
i. Social mobility is found highest in this class.
ii. They live comfortably than the poor class, but
are financially lower than upper class.
iii. They all are employees.
iv. Their norms are likely to be similar to that of
poor class due to recent switching to middle class.
v. Their population is 28% out of the total
population.
3. Working social class:
i. Social mobility is the lowest in them.
ii. Rate of deviance is high in them.
iii. They are most likely to be drug/narcotics addicted.
iv. They lack long term planning.
v. They are either unemployed, or get employment for
short term basis.
vii. Their size is 70% out of total population of
Pakistan.
Thanks