LANE 422

SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Summarized from
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
An Introduction to Language and Society
Peter Trudgill
th
4 edition. 2000,
and other sources
Prepared by
Dr. Abdullah S. Al-Shehri

Chapter 2

Language and Social Class

Social Class Dialects

(Sociolects)
If you know the English-speaking societies well, you will be able to tell a

speakers social status on the basis of the variety of language he/she uses.

The variety of language that is used by a particular social class is called a

sociolect.

A sociolect may include phonological, grammatical, lexical, and phonetic

(accent) differences.

The different classes of society are separated by social barriers and

distance, similar to geographical ones.

So, the diffusion of linguistic features may be halted by barriers of social

class, age, race, religion, etc, and social distance may also have the same
effect as geographical distance.

This type of social differentiation is known as social stratification.

Social Stratification

Social stratification is a term used to the hierarchical ordering of a society, especially

in terms of wealth, power and social status.

In the industrialized Western World, societies are stratified into social classes, which
gave rise to social class dialects.

Social classes are not clearly defined or labeled entities. They are simply aggregates
of people with similar socioeconomic characteristics.

Social mobility movement up or down the social hierarch is possible.

Sociolects are not particularly easy to study, and describe, because, like regional
dialects, they form a continuum and are rather complex and fluid entities.

The more heterogeneous a society is, the more heterogeneous is its language.

Western-type social-class stratification is not universal..

Caste System
In India, unlike in the Western societies, traditional society is stratified

into different castes.

Castes are relatively stable, clearly named groups, rigidly separated

from each other, with hereditary membership, and with little possibility
of in and out movement.

Different castes speak different varieties of language.

Because of rigid separation between different castes, caste dialects

tend to be relatively clear-cut, and caste dialect differences are

sometimes greater than regional dialect differences.

Caste dialects are thus easier to study and describe than social class

dialect.

From Rural Dialectology to Urban

Sociolinguistics
In the past, dialectologists focused their study of language variation on

geographical dialects of rural areas.

They were concerned to record many dialect features before they were

lost.

They thought that, unlike in the city, in the rural speech of older and

uneducated speakers, there were the real and pure dialects.

It turned out later that the pure homogeneous dialect is a myth since all

language varieties are subject to variation and change.

Dialectologists, then, began to incorporate social as well as geographical

information into their dialect surveys.

This paved the way for urban dialectology which then became

sociolinguistics.

The Rise of Sociolinguistic

Research
Sociolinguistic investigation of language variation gained

momentum beginning 1966 when the American linguist William

Labov published The Social Stratification of English in New York
City.

Labov carried out a tape-recorded interviews with 340

informants selected randomly.

Since informants were a representative sample, the linguistic

description could therefore be an accurate description of the

varieties of English in New York.

The study is probably the first of its kind which correlated

linguistic variation with social variation.

Labovs New York Study

The study tests Labovs hypothesis that non-prevocalic /r/ usage (as in farm,

fair) correlates with social class of the speaker.

Labov examined the speech of shop assistants in three different department

stores, of high, medium and low social status.

The procedure was to find out which departments were on the 4th floor and

then ask as many assistants as possible a question like: Excuse me, where
are the womens shoes?

The answer to this question would be 4th floor, with two possible occurrences

of non-prevocalic /r/.

Information on /r/ usage was obtained from 264 informants.

Results of Labovs New York Study

38% of the high ranking store assistants used no /r/.
49% in the middle ranking store used no /r/.
83% in the low ranking store used no /r/.
Thus, Labovs study showed how a relatively trivial

feature of accent can be important socially.

Quantitative Sociolinguistic Research

Following the classical Labovian approach to quantitative studies,
sociolinguistic research differentiates five different stages.
A. Selecting speakers, circumstances and linguistic variables.
B. Collecting the sample.
C. Identifying the linguistic variables and their variants in the

texts.

D. Processing the figures.

E. Interpreting the results.

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A. Selecting Speakers, Circumstances

and Linguistic Variables.
The selection of speakers, circumstances and linguistic variables involves

some extremely important decisions, which are to a certain extent dictated

by hypotheses about the expected results.

It is similarly important that all the speech should be collected under the

same circumstances, so far as this is possible.

There is a major problem of definition here, both for social variables

relating to speaker and circumstances, and for the linguistic variables

themselves.

How can we define 'manual worker'? How can we distinguish old from

young? Even worse is the problem of defining the community to be

studied, since 'speech communities' are not self-defining.

The researcher has to provide solutions which are at least reasonably

satisfactory, to avoid the real danger that his results will be valueless
because of ambiguities in defining the variables.

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B. Collecting the Speech Sample

The collection of the speech sample

necessitates finding appropriate speakers

who are willing to participate.
This means finding people willing to be

interviewed and recorded.

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C. Identifying the Linguistic Variables and

their Variants in the Speech Sample.
At this stage, one might expect the least difficulty, since we already

know what the variants to be distinguished are, and all we need to

do is listen for them.

However, there is a considerable degree of subjectivity in

recognizing phonetic variants, and different researchers can

produce different analyses of the same sample.

One may also need to record information about the social context in

which each linguistic variant is used since this often influences the
choice of one variant over another, specially if context is specified by
the hypothesis as to which social contexts are relevant.

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D. Processing the figures.

The processing of the figures involves counting the number of

occurrences of each variant in each sample, and comparing the

figures for different samples.

The obvious step is to reduce all the figures to percentages,

since this makes comparison much easier.

The next step is to discover which differences between samples

are significant, i.e. which would form a reasonable basis for

generalizing to other samples of the same types.

The investigator has to use statistical tests in order to decide

how significant the figures are.

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E. Interpreting the results.

The interpretation of the results is in some ways the

most difficult stage, since this is where the findings

have to be fitted into a general theoretical framework
dealing with the structure of language and its
relations to society and individuals.

Success at this stage depends not only on

appropriate methodology, but also on having an

adequate general theoretical framework.

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