3- Social Class and Social Networks Flashcards
Social class
A measure of status which is often based on occupation, income and wealth, but also can be measured in terms of aspirations and mobility.
These factors can then be used to group individuals scoring similarly on these factors into socioeconomic classes.
Status
Max Weber’s theory of social class held that it was based on a person’s status, measured in terms of their life choices in addition to the measures of wealth and occupation.
Cross-over effect
The cross-over effect emerges at the intersection of style and class.
Typically, it refers to the breakdown in the most careful speech styles of clear stratification between speakers of different social classes.
Fine vs broad stratisfaction
Fine stratification: A distribution of variants which shows each group of speakers patterning minimally differently from each other in style. Shows up as a small gap between trends lines on a line graph.
Broad stratification: A distribution of variants which shows each group of speakers patterning markedly differently from each other in each style. Shows up as a big gap between trend lines on a line graph.
Change from above vs below
Change from above: Changes taking place in a speech community above the level of individuals’ conscious awareness. Able to commented on.
Changed from below: Changes taking place in a speech community below the level of conscious awareness. Not to subject of overt comment.
Hypercorrection
The production of a form which never occurs in a native variety on the basis of the speaker’s misanalysis of the input.
Linguistic insecurity
Speakers’ feeling that the variety they use is somehow inferior, ugly, or bad. Negative attitudes to one’s own variety expressed in aesthetic or moral terms.
Negative concord
A language where a negative element/constituent in a sentence requires all other indefinites to also be negative has a rule of negative concord.
Social networks
The relationships individuals contract with others reaching out through social and geographical space linking many individuals.
Properties of social networks
Density: The number of people that ego has ties to who also have ties to each other.
Multiplexity: The quality of ties ego has with others.
Core network member
Term used by Jenny Cheshire to describe the members centrally involved and actively participant in a friendship network.
Distinguished from peripherical and secondary members who were progressively less involved.
Dense vs loose social networks
Dense social networks: They are characterized by everyone within the network knowing each other.
Loose social networks: Not all members know each other.
Uniplex vs multiplex ties
Uniplex tie: A network tie between individuals that expresses one role or basis for contact and interaction.
Multiplex ties: Individuals in social network can be linked through a single social relationship (cousin) or several social relationships (cousin-coworker-friend).
Life-modes
Different modes of production and consumption. Social class may be seen as a process giving rise to those distinctions.
Community of practice
A smaller unit than a social network.
Unit of analysis introduced to sociolinguistics by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConell-Ginet in their research on language and gender.
Associated with analyses of variation that emphasize speakers’ agency.
