class

Question 1

Henry Tafjel’s Social Identity Theory

Answer 1

The social groups we belong too eg. family, football team etc. are an important sense of pride
Therefore we separate ourselves into ‘them’ and ‘us’
When we create these categories we ‘exaggerate’
The similarities between things in the same group
The difference between groups
Eg. linguistic differences between groups are minor but we make them important

Question 2

Peter trudgill’s Norwich Study

Answer 2

Peter Trudgill studied norwich speech in the 70s to find out how and why peoples’ accents varied
He studied the final consonant, ng (velar nasal), in words such as walking and running
In Norwich, the sound if often pronounced as an alveolar nasal, eg. walkin and runnin (g-dropping)
He found that:

use of velar nasal
upper middle casual style: 29%
upper middle word list style: 100%
lower working casual style: 0%
lower working word list style: 29%

This shows:
There is a direct correlation between both accent and the use of the velar nasal 9the higher the class, the more likely you are to use it)
However, all classes adjust their use of ‘g-dropping’ according to the style their speaking in, this is called ‘style-shifting’

Question 3

Alan Ross’s U and Non-U language

Answer 3

Looked at the lexical differences between the english of highest social classes and the middle classes
Ross suggested that the middle classes attempted to sound like the higher classes through a number of lexical choices that acted as ‘shibboleths’
Middle class speakers wrongly chose to use pretentious words (U-terms) instead of words they associated with the working class (Non-U terms)
Examples to include in essay: serviette instead of napkin, wealthy instead of rich, pardon instead of what

Question 4

Basil Bernstein’s restricted and elaborated code

Answer 4

Investigated why working-class pupils underachieved in language-based subjects, by asking them to explain a photograph, which he deduced was due to the difference in language
He concluded that everybody uses ‘restricted code’ which is ‘implicit’ and relies on ‘sharing context’, which is why we use it primarily with family/friends/colleagues, but only the middle classes use elaborated code
Bernstein claimed that working classes could not elaborate as they moved around less and only tended to interact with people they share a context with