Language
and Social
Class
Sociolinguistics
Members
Malik Umer Ajmal
Ehtisham Tanveer
Afifa Butt
3
Outline
✗ Introduction ✗ Social Class
✗ What is ✗ Age
language? ✗ Gender
✗ What is Social
✗ Education
class?
✗ Profession
✗ Sociolect
✗ Economic
.
4
Outline
✗ Language Difference due to Economics
✗ Vocabulary
✗ Pronunciation
✗ Grammar
✗ Conclusion
5
1 What is a
Language
The way by which people
communicate with one another,
build relationships and create a
sense of community.
What is a Social
class?
→Divisions in society based on economic
and
social status
→ People in the same social class typically
share a similar level of wealth, educational
achievement, type of job, and income.
→ Social class is based on Education, age,
gender, profession, and economics.
7
Social Class
Division
✗ Mostly social class refers to the
economic class which is also divided
into 3 categories upper, middle, and
lower while in Europe to divided into
5 classes as working, peasants,
underclass
✗ Upper class
✗ Middle class
✗ Working-class
✗ Peasants
8
✗ Underclass
SOciolect
✗ A variety of a language
that is used by a particular ✗ There are types
social group. ✗ Arcolect
✗ A sociolect is a form of
language or a set of lexical ✗ Bacilect
items used by a ✗ Vulgar
socioeconomic class, a
profession, an age group or ✗ Slang
other social group ✗ colloquial
9
Language and
social
Language Class
of every group is
differ from other depending
on many factors like age,
gender, economic, profession,
educated by variation of
pronunciation, grammar and
vocabulary
10
Social Class
✗ Education ✗ Age
✗ The language of educated ✗ In the smaller age we
people are formal , have low level of
appropriate, less language
grammatical mistakes, ✗ Its refined with growing
talk like book age
✗ Uneducated people ✗ The language of a 18 year
language are more casual, boy is more enhanced
ungrammatical, infrequent than a language of 7 year
wording kid
11
Social Class
✗ Gender ✗ Profession
✗ Language of men and ✗ Different professions have
women are different from different language
each other ✗ Their daily talks
✗ Language of women is influenced with the
Rapport, Supportive, vocabulary of their
Tentative and profession
Conversational ✗ As Doctors uses medical
initiation terms in daily life talks
✗ Language of men is
showing Report talk, 12
instrumental ,advice
Economics
✗ Social class mainly referred
by Economics
✗ There are 3 main classes
✗ Upper Class
✗ Middle Class
✗ Lower Class
13
Economics
✗ Upper Class
✗ Upper class language ✗ Their gathering are
is refined, enhanced, also with people of
less grammatical, upper class so
spelling, speaking and
pronunciation listening high
mistakes. standard language
daily, they got
refined language.
14
Economics
✗ Middle Class vocabulary mistakes
✗ Middle class ✗ Their gathering with
language is normal people of upper and
not too much high lower both classes so
and not much low. these 2 groups
✗ They can speak good influenced their
language as average
language but with
language
some grammatically,
spelling and
15
Economics
✗ Lower Class good as upper and
middle class.
✗ Lower class contains 3
more classes Working ✗ They have many
class, peasants, and mistakes regarding
underclass. grammar, pronunciation
and spellings.
✗ They also far from
education or they got ✗ Their exposure is not
only basic education too much so their
language is limited
✗ The language of lower
class is some far fair ✗ they are also unable to
but not perfect and understand many terms
of language
16
Language
difference Due to
social class
Differences in
• Vocabulary
• Pronunciation
• Grammar
17
What is
Vocabulary?
✗ →Vocabulary refers to the words
we must understand to
communicate effectively.
Educators often consider four
types of vocabulary: listening,
speaking, reading, and writing.
18
Different Social Classes Uses Different Words Such
as
Upper class Speaker Non-Upper class speaker
House Home
Spectacles Glasses
Sitting Room Lounge
Lavatory Toilet
Sofa Seat
19
What is
Pronunciation?
✗ →It Is the way in which a word or a
language is spoken or the ,way we
articulate the words
✗ → In different social classes there is
different pronunciation. Here is
example of England
20
✗ Words that initiate with h
✗ Two types of pronunciation for h such as ‘house’ [h} / Ø
✗ The rate of h omission on start increases as we go in
lower classmission
Social Class Rate of h omission
1 17
2 21
3 43
4 64
5 96
comparison between social class and the rate of ‘h’ o
21
✗ r that behind the vowel
✗ Two types of pronunciation for r such as ‘car’ or ‘card’
[r] / Ø
✗ People of higher class have the tendency to omit the r
sound behind vowel
Social class Reading
1 0
2 28
3 44
4 49
The realization of [r] in words
22
✗ Suffix ‘ing’
✗ Two types of pronunciation in ‘-ing’ in words such as
‘swimming’ and ‘sleeping’ – [in] or [iŋ]
✗ Higher social classes use more [in] compared to [iŋ]
Social class Norwich West Yorkshire
1 31 5
2 41 34
3 91 61
4 1oo 83
Use of pronunciation [iŋ] for suffix ‘-ing’
23
What is
Grammar?
✗ →The study of the classes, their
inflections and their functions and
relations in the sentence.
✗ → People of high class have good
grammar compare to people of lower
class
24
✗ In English speaking communities it was found
that children from lower families used more
vernacular verb form than upper and middle
class families
✗ For Example
Form Higher class Lower class
Present tense He walks to college everyday He walk to college everyday
Past tense I finished that book yesterday I finish that book yesterday
Negative form Nobody wants any chips Nobody don't want no chips.\
25
Conclusion
✗ From all the above discussion we can
conclude that social class affects the
language.
✗ Difference in social classes led to
difference in language by many aspects
such as vocabulary, grammar,
pronunciation. 26
Than
ks!
Any questions?
27
