Language and Social Groups/Class

Question 1

Moore - Bolton School social groups

Answer 1

• Looked at the non-standard use of ‘were’ and looks at 4 groups:
• Eden Valley Girls - girls who came from very well-off backgrounds; focused on school, but engaged in activities like shopping too. Used standard form ‘was’ almost all of the time, most likely due to their higher social class and the fact that they lived in an area away from the other girls
• The Populars - girls who were not focused on school and engaged in activities which were rebellious like drinking and smoking. Group did not always use the non-standard form, but three girls were members of a higher social class and they didn’t use the non-standard form at all
• The Townies - a breakaway group from the populars, more rebellious and engaged in activities like drugs and sex, used non-standard forms in spite of the mixed class of people in the group (and mix of genders)
• The Geeks - girls who were school oriented and engaged in school activities like choir. Generally disliked use of non-standard forms, but the 4 girls who did use non-standard forms were all from a lower social class

Question 2

Milroy - Social Network Theory

Answer 2

• Open networks - where an individual’s contacts in a conversation tend to not know each other; more fluid + susceptible to CAT
• Closed networks - people’s contacts all know each other; more rigid, sociolect

Question 3

Milroy - Belfast study

Answer 3

• Studied 3 areas in Belfast (including Hammer and Clonard) - working class and high unemployment rates
• Asked people to give a Network Strength Score (1-5) based on the person’s knowledge of other people in the community, workplace and leisure activity
• Also measured each person’s use of linguistic variables such as non-standard forms as ‘th’ in mother
• Found that a high Network Strength Score was correlated with the use of vernacular/non-standard forms
• Shows the impact of context on a sociolect
• Men’s speech revealed high usage of vernacular/non-standard forms and had closer knit social networks
• Women’s speech revealed less use of vernacular/non-standard and belonged to less dense social networks (Clonard women very close to one another)
• How much pressure does your social group put on you to speak in one specific way? (linguistic homogeneity)

Question 4

Milroy - Evaluations

Answer 4

+ Covert observation - increases validity
- Those in closed networks may not use non-standard forms at all, especially if one does not have a regional accent
- Study only conducted in Belfast - might not generalise to a wider population; could compare to other places
- Individual differences may have been present within results

Question 5

Eckert - Jocks and Burnouts

Answer 5

• Questioned whether demographic categories (age, gender, ethnicity, social class) were really the biggest influence on language use
• Looked at the social practices of different social groups in Detroit
• Jock - well off, middle class, intelligent and wants to perform well in school
• Burnout - working class, often skipped class and engaged in ‘rebellious behaviour’ e.g. smoking, drinking
• Social practice - what we, as speaker, share when we engage in an activity with each other
• Burnouts used more taboo language and more slang associated with drug use
• Burnouts used more non-standard grammar e.g. double negation and vernacular accent of Detroit
• Jocks used socially prestigious accents
• Two groups were critical of each other’s language
• Jock traits were more likely to be female traits and burnout traits were more likely to be male traits

Question 6

Eckert - Evaluation

Answer 6

• Individual differences - may not generalise to all people within these groups
• Hard to define what a social group is and definitions are malleable e.g. our perception of jocks is more inline with other people
• Stigma towards non-standard accents; socially sensitive - not all people who speaks more colloquially are drug addicts and be rebellious#
• Small scale study HOWEVER social groups are often established in school so still might be generalisable
• Linguistic determinism - if you tell people that jocks or burnouts speak in this way, it leads to stereotyping, which is dangerous (language dictating thought)

Question 7

Labov - Martha’s Vineyard

Answer 7

• 3 groups’ pronunciation of diphthongs /aw/ and /ay/ as in ‘house’ and ‘spice’
• Older Chilmark fishermen - used exaggerated vowel sounds
• Younger population - used the vowels the Chilmark fishermen used to appear distant to the tourists (covert prestige, divergence)
• The tourists -

Question 8

Trudgill - Norwich Study

Answer 8

• Looked at the pronunciation of ‘walking’ and ‘talking’ (g-dropping) to see if there was a correlation between class, gender and the use of non-standard forms
• Women of all classes over-reported the number of standard forms they used; valued overt prestige
• Men over-reported their use of non-standard forms; valued covert prestige
• Women used more standard forms than men and were oftentimes hypercorrect
• The higher the class, the more use of standard forms

Question 9

Petyt - Bradford study

Answer 9

• Looked at aitch-dropping (losing the ‘h’ in words like horse)
• Found that the lower the social class, the more likely the speaker was to drop the aitch
• The socially aspirational speakers incorrectly used the sounds in words like cushion pronouncing it with the /u/ sound instead of the /uh/ sound

Question 10

Bernstein - Elaborated and Restricted code

Answer 10

• Restricted code - inherently deictic, relaxed syntax and uses many simple coordinating conjunctions
• Elaborated code - standard syntax, more subordinate clauses and subordinating conjunctions
• Found middle class children could use both codes whereas lower class children didn’t use anything other than restricted code
• Both classes did understand both codes when spoken to them

Question 11

Bernstein - Evaluations

Answer 11

• Conducted on a limited sample
• Only qualitative data were collected - hard to interpret and could have been prone to researcher bias
• Elaborated and restricted codes not fully defined - does not cover all aspects of lexis; determinist
• Could be viewed as a prescriptivist theory by categorising social classes

Question 12

Lave & Wenger - Communities of practice

Answer 12

share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly