This document discusses social class and its relationship to sociolinguistics. It defines social class as a measure of social organization based on various social attributes like occupation, income, wealth, and aspirations. Social class theory divides classes into workers and those who control production. Classes can experience downward or upward mobility. Language differs between social classes, and status is determined by factors like occupation and income that can group people into socioeconomic classes. Changes in language can come from above through prestige forms, or from below through internal linguistic changes, and different social groups may lead each type of change.

1. Social Class
Sociolinguistics
Sonya Ayu Kumala, M.Hum

2. Social Class
A measure of social
organisation at the level of the
larger speech community.
A function of the interaction of
a whole lot of different social
attributes.

3. Why do sociolinguistics’ students need to
comprehend about social class?
1. Language differs by its speaker
2. Language speaker are varied into
various classes (social classes)

4. Social classes are divided based on
• Occupation
• Income
• Wealth
• Aspirations
• Mobility
• SOCIOECONOMICS

5. Social Class Theory (1)
• Karl Marx
• Classes are divided into:
a. The one who producing the capital (worker
class)
b. The one who control the production (middle
class)

6. Social Class Theory (1)
• Max Webbers’ view : classification of men into
such groups is based on their consumption
patterns rather than on their place in the market
or in the process of production.
• Lifestyle and life choice

7. Class vs Caste
• There is a possibility of
individual mobility.
• The class determines
human positions in larger
social order. But it is not
fixed.
• There is no possibility of
individual mobility.
• The caste determines
human position in larger
social order.

8. Caste system
• Caste systems Relatively fixed social
groups. A person is usually born into a
particular caste and the possibilities for
movement out of it are limited.

9. Class?
• Downward
or
• Upward
LINGUISTICS CONSEQUENCES
(Variation)

10. Status
• A composite of economic wealth, linguistics (and other
social) behaviour, attitude and aspirations.
• Social status : 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.

11. Language determine social status

12. 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.

13. • For example, when reading word lists, speakers from
the second highest social class will suddenly produce more tokens
of an incoming or prestige form than speakers in the highest social
class do, instead of producing slightly fewer tokens as they do in
their conversation or interview styles
• Hypercorrect.

14. Social stratification
distinct social levels that can be identified, and can be ranked/evaluated
• 1. Fine stratification
• 2. Board stratification

15. Fine Stratification
• Small changes in overall frequency differentiate the
averages for the different groups.
• A distribution of variants for example across groups of
speakers in different styles.
• It is showed that
• Refers to small gaps or contrasts between social groups

16. Broad Stratification
• The frequency with which a given variant occurs in
different social classes is relatively more marked
• Refers to large gaps or contrasts between social groups.

17. Conscious change vs unconscious
‘from above’ vs ‘from below’

18. Change from above
• Introduced by the dominant social class (not necessarily
=the highest one!)
• Usually borrowings from higher-prestige Speech
Communities
• First appears in careful speech style
• Inconsistent with the vernacular
• Correlated with changes in other features
• Thus may refuse integration into the vernacular system,
and achieve the status of a ‘coexistent system’
• Example: (R)-fulness (=R-insertion) in NYC; sph- words
in English

19. Change from below
• Not driven by extra-linguistic (=social) factors:
• Systematic changes that appear first in the vernacular, &
represent the operation of internal, linguistic factors…
• May be introduced by any social class” (Labov 1994:79)
• Local identity and status are primary motivations for this
type of change
• Example : (aw), (ay) centralization in Martha’s
Vineyard (Labov 1963, described in Downes chap. 7)

20. Example (1)
• Women lead changes that come from above the level of
social awareness, and involve the new prestige forms of
higher-ranked social groups.
• Whereas men initiate changes which spread
from below the level of social awareness, and away from
the accepted norms towards the vernacular.

21. • In Martha’s Vineyard the change in pronunciation was
taking place below the level of social awareness and
was led by men responding to covert pressure from their
peers.
• In Martha’s Vineyard the change in pronunciation was
taking place below the level of social awareness and
was led by men responding to covert pressure from their
peers

22. Example (2)
• Women in New York were using a higher degree of
prestige variants imposed from above.
• Working class women may be more exposed to standard
speech at work and have more incentive to modify their
speech than men.
• Women are generally granted less status and power
than men, they attempt to secure or signal their social
status linguistically by using prestige language forms.