Ammarah Sakrani

Every society has some kind of stratification or group classification, where some groups are able to access a better lifestyle than others. This can be seen all throughout history and is still present today in some societies.

The inequality of social and economic status give some groups more prestige than others and a social class system develops. Awareness of social class is central to many people’s image of themselves. The social stratification in any society is linked to the linguistic prestige (the degree of respect and value given to a particular style of language by a speech community) of different groups within it. Class, according to social anthropologist Kate Fox, “influences all aspects of English life and culture.”

There are more examples of the social stratification caused by language;

William Labov’s New York study in 1966 researched the pronunciation of the consonant r after a vowel, producing a distinctive sound, often heard in accents of Scotland, Ireland and north America. Speaking with this style of accent connoted prestige and the working class and lower middle-class groups were more likely to change the way they spoke to reflect what they felt was the right way of pronunciation.

Peter Trudgill in 1873 in Norwich, conducted sociolinguistic interviews with individuals from different social classes in the area. Trudgill’s research revealed that there was a clear correlation between social class and pronunciation patterns, with working-class women being more aware of the more prestigious form of pronunciation. More recently, the Great British Class Survey in 2011 by BBC found that clear divisions still exist, based on wealth and access to technical knowledge.

Teenage and gender group identity

Teenagers are early adopters of popular culture, including style, fashion, music, new technology and language. Teenagers are innovators of language and this is an important feature of their conversational styles. Often the language they use can be unclear to those outside of their group.

While this is a criticism and critics argue that teenage language actually reduces their language from a lexis of several thousand words acquired in childhood. It is associated with lower standards, as defined by older generations who often fail to understand teenage use of patois (a particular variety of speech used by a group which may be regarded as having a low status). Teenagers can create their own virtual lives and games that they choose themselves and control. These come with their own lexis which is shared between the participants. The rise of digital communication is immediate and global and is generated by the user themselves and evolving almost every day.

Teenage language acquisition is not about learning language, rather its learning to adapt and use language in adult situations. Teenagers, more than adults, many live in contrasting language worlds of formal Standard English and the language of their own social groups. Therefore, majority of teenagers code switch between different language styles and those that cannot code switch are perceived as inarticulate.

Language and Gender

Gender issues are part of our cultural fabric. Stereotypically, woman had binary positions in language and men controlled language because of the power system.

While men handle heavier and more serious issues, women are stereotyped as passive listers whose light-hearted conversation is “gossip.” Not only that, men are seen to interrupt and hold the conversational floor more than women. This is backed by a study conducted in the mid 1970’s which showed that men used 46 interruptions whereas women used only 2.

Another difference is evidenced by CMC; Computer Mediated Communication claims that the language women use online is language typified by friendliness and a lack of a hostility. This contrasts with men who use hostility and sarcasm. Other studies however have contradicted this and shown that women use the hostile online language and are more aggressive users of language then men in CMC.

Different lexis has been stereotypically applied to the conversational styles of men and women:

1. Men are less likely to give supportive feedback and less likely to cooperate in turn-taking.
2. Women’s conversation is the reverse as they tend to be more conversationally cooperative giving feedback, using tag questions and less assertions and commands.
3. Women tend to do the ‘hard work’ keeping conversations going. Robin Lakoff identified it as the ‘politeness principle’.
4. Women tend to be more evaluative and descriptive as well as showing increased use of adverbs of degree to embellish what is being said.
5. Men’s language has been considered coarser than women. Men are likely to use incorrect grammatical forms whereas women use more standard forms of language.

In 1990, Deborah Tannen linked the status and roles of the participants in the western societies with language. She showed that men’s conversation tended to be about the giving and receiving of information in cultures where men wish to be seen to act independently and to put across to others their status and security to act in that way. Consequently, their conversations are often assertive. Women’s conversation was more to do with building and reinforcing cooperative relationships and all the negotiating strategies such as using polite forms of address and building relationships through discourse.

The standpoint theory by Harding and Wood suggests that language should be practiced from the point of view of women. Women’s lives and experiences are significantly different from those of men and so women have a different type of knowledge, which may not be given equal status to that of men.

Language of inclusion and exclusion

Language is an integral part of stereotyping. The language you use and the groups of people with whom you speak are an important part of your self-identity. This has often been linked to the power and influence of dominant groups in society.

Let’s look at some instances around the world:

England: When William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, Norman French became the official language, replacing the language spoken by the defeated Anglo-Saxons. French was the language of the aristocracy and the powerful in England while the peasants continued to speak Old English. Over time, these two languages gradually merged to form Present Day English.

South America: Under Spain’s colonial rule, Spanish replaced Quechua and other Amerindian languages while Portuguese became the official langue of Brazil.

New Zealand: The minority languages, such as Māori survived, official attitudes and policies discouraged their use as it was seen as irrelevant to economic advancements, with the view that English needed to replace it. Now, a policy of encouragement and inclusion has transformed what had become a minority native language into a mainstream component of the nation’s culture.

North America: Africans who were transported to work as slaves on the plantations of the southern United States spoke a variety of languages and were totally excluded from any rights in their new environment. The slave owners feared rebellion and adopted a policy of mixing different language groups. This emerged a mix of lexis and syntax, known as ‘pidgin’. Over time, this basic language developed more complex grammatical structures to form a fully functioning creole language.

South Africa: Under the apartheid region, the white government proposed that black children should be taught in Afrikaans, one of the native languages. This sparked riots in 1976 as these groups saw education in English as an advantage which was denied to them.

It is important to remember that language is not just a tool for communication but can have far reaching impacts on a society as a whole and on an individual’s opportunities, perceptions and quality of life. It’s essential that we recognize the power language holds in today’s highly connected world and that we hold the power to mould, shape and influence it.