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The relationship between social class and language is one of the most extensively researched areas of sociolinguistics, and a high-frequency focus for Paper 2 Section A diversity essays. From the 1960s onwards, scholars such as Bernstein, Labov, Trudgill and Milroy have demonstrated that linguistic variation correlates systematically with social stratification — that is, it is patterned and predictable rather than random. This lesson explains the key theories and studies, evaluates their methodologies and theoretical assumptions, and connects class-based variation to the wider questions of power, identity and social mobility. Remember that the 30-mark Section A essay rewards AO1 (the precise use of terminology and methods) and especially AO2 (critical understanding of concepts and theories), so you must be able to evaluate, not merely narrate, each study below.
Key Definition: Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society, examining how social factors such as class, gender, ethnicity, age and social network influence language use. A sociolinguistic variable is a linguistic feature (a sound, word or structure) that varies systematically with social factors — for example, the
(ng)variable in "walking"/"walkin'".
A word first on what "social class" even means, since the concept is more contested than it looks. Most classic studies operationalised class through occupation, sometimes supplemented by income, education and housing, to assign speakers to bands such as upper-middle, lower-middle and working class. This is convenient but crude: it treats class as a fixed external box a person sits in, whereas later work (Milroy's networks, Eckert's communities of practice) treats social position as something speakers construct and perform. For the exam you should be able to use the traditional bands when discussing Labov and Trudgill, while noting their limitations — that class is multi-dimensional, that the boundaries are fuzzy, and that how a speaker identifies may matter more than the band an analyst assigns them. Flagging this measurement problem is itself a sign of the critical, evaluative reading the AQA examiner rewards.
Basil Bernstein (1971), in Class, Codes and Control, proposed that social class shapes not only what people say but how they say it. He identified two codes — systematic orientations to meaning associated with different social groups. It is essential to present Bernstein's theory critically: it is a much-contested framework, not an established fact, and the most marks come from interrogating it rather than reporting it.
Key Definition: The restricted code is characterised by short, grammatically simpler utterances, implicit meaning, context-dependent reference and reliance on shared assumptions between speakers. The elaborated code uses longer, grammatically more complex utterances, explicit meaning, context-independent reference and a wider, more individuated vocabulary.
| Feature | Restricted code | Elaborated code |
|---|---|---|
| Utterance length | Short | Longer, more complex |
| Vocabulary | Narrower, predictable | Wider, individuated |
| Meaning | Implicit, context-dependent | Explicit, context-independent |
| Grammar | Simpler, more co-ordination | More subordination |
| Reference | Exophoric ("it," "they," "over there") | Named/anaphoric referents |
| Associated context | Close-knit groups; shared assumptions | Formal/educational settings |
Bernstein argued that working-class children had ready access mainly to the restricted code, while middle-class children commanded both codes. Because schools operate overwhelmingly in the elaborated code — textbooks, examinations and teacher-talk all demand explicit, context-independent language — working-class children faced a systematic disadvantage. Education, on this account, rewarded the linguistic habits of the already-advantaged.
To make the distinction concrete, compare two ways of describing the same picture to someone who cannot see it. A restricted-code rendering relies on shared context and exophoric reference — "they're playing there and it goes over there and he shouts at them" — which is perfectly efficient if speaker and hearer share the scene, but opaque if they do not. An elaborated-code rendering supplies the missing context explicitly — "three boys are playing football in a garden, and when the ball breaks a window the man next door shouts at them" — making meaning recoverable by a reader with no shared context. Bernstein's claim was that schooling and examinations demand the second, context-independent style, so children practised mainly in the first are disadvantaged. Critics retort that this confuses the demands of a decontextualised task (describe a picture to an unseen listener) with a deficit in the child, and that working-class children switch readily to explicit styles when the situation genuinely requires it.
Strengths:
Criticisms (the more important material):
The safest exam stance is to present Bernstein as a historically influential but heavily contested theory, and to use Labov as the pivot from a deficit to a difference model.
The single most important conceptual axis in this whole topic is the contrast between the deficit and difference positions, and a strong essay should be able to articulate it crisply:
| Deficit model | Difference model | |
|---|---|---|
| Core claim | Non-standard/working-class language is impoverished and limits thought | Non-standard varieties are equally complex, just different |
| Attitude to Standard English | The proper, fully adequate form | One variety among many, with social prestige |
| Educational implication | Working-class children must be "compensated" for a language deficit | Children's home varieties should be respected; SE taught as an addition |
| Associated figures | Bernstein (as often read); Bereiter and Engelmann (1966) | Labov; Trudgill; most modern linguists |
The modern linguistic consensus is decisively on the difference side. The deficit view foundered on two problems: first, it mistook the effects of testing conditions (formal interviews that silence less powerful speakers) for properties of the speakers' language; and second, it had no answer to the demonstrable systematicity of non-standard grammar. Yet deficit attitudes persist powerfully in schools, employment and the media, which is why the debate remains live rather than settled — a nuance worth flagging for AO2.
A study that complements the phonological focus of Labov and Trudgill is Jenny Cheshire's (1982) research on the speech of adolescents in Reading, reported in Variation in an English Dialect. Cheshire studied non-standard grammatical variables — among them non-standard -s on present-tense verbs ("we goes," "they calls"), non-standard "what" as a relative pronoun ("the man what lives there"), multiple negation and "ain't".
Her key finding was that the use of these non-standard forms correlated with adherence to a set of vernacular culture values — toughness, fighting, swearing, carrying weapons, scepticism about school. Boys who scored highly on this "vernacular culture index" used more non-standard grammar; the variants functioned as markers of in-group, anti-establishment identity. Cheshire's work is valuable in an essay because it (a) extends class-and-language analysis from accent to grammar, (b) reinforces the covert prestige concept with British, adolescent data, and (c) anticipates the communities-of-practice approach by tying language to locally meaningful social values rather than to a crude class label alone.
Class-based variation is not static; speakers actively adjust their speech, and Howard Giles's accommodation theory (Communication Accommodation Theory) provides the vocabulary for this. Convergence is the process of shifting one's speech towards that of an interlocutor (for instance, a working-class speaker using more standard forms in a job interview), typically to gain approval or reduce social distance. Divergence is shifting away, to emphasise difference or assert identity (for instance, exaggerating a regional or working-class style to signal solidarity or resistance).
Accommodation reframes Labov's "attention to speech" and Trudgill's prestige in interactional terms: the lower-middle-class hypercorrection Labov observed can be seen as upward convergence under self-monitoring, while the covert-prestige maintenance of vernacular forms among Trudgill's Norwich men is a kind of divergence from the standard. Linking the studies through accommodation theory demonstrates exactly the synoptic understanding the AQA examiner rewards.
Giles further distinguished upward convergence (shifting towards a higher-prestige variety, e.g. a candidate adopting standard forms in an interview) from downward convergence (a manager softening their standard speech towards a worker's vernacular to seem approachable). He also drew on similarity-attraction theory — the idea that we are drawn to those who resemble us, so convergence tends to increase approval — while noting that convergence can backfire: if it is perceived as patronising or inauthentic (a politician suddenly "dropping their g's" before a working-class audience), it may reduce rather than increase rapport. This subtlety matters for class analysis because it shows that adopting prestige or vernacular forms is a risk-laden social calculation, not a mechanical response to status, and that listeners actively evaluate accommodation rather than simply accepting it. The concept therefore enriches, rather than replaces, the overt/covert prestige framework.
Key Definition: Convergence is adjusting one's language to become more similar to an interlocutor's; divergence is adjusting it to become more different. Both are strategies for negotiating social distance and identity, and both can be upward (towards higher-prestige forms) or downward (towards lower-prestige forms).
William Labov (1966) conducted one of the most celebrated sociolinguistic studies ever undertaken: his investigation of the social stratification of post-vocalic /r/ in New York City, reported in The Social Stratification of English in New York City. In New York, pronouncing the /r/ after a vowel (in "fourth," "floor," "car") is the prestige variant — the reverse of the British situation, a contrast worth flagging for AO2 credit.
Labov used a rapid and anonymous survey, visiting three department stores that served distinct social strata:
| Store | Social class of customers | Relative prestige |
|---|---|---|
| Saks Fifth Avenue | Upper-middle class | High |
| Macy's | Lower-middle / middle class | Mid |
| S. Klein | Working class | Lower |
He asked assistants a question engineered to elicit the answer "fourth floor" — which contains two post-vocalic /r/ tokens — then feigned mishearing and asked again, prompting a careful, emphatic repetition (more self-monitored "emphatic" speech).
/r/ (the prestige form)./r/ on the emphatic repetition — the lower-middle-class group corrected most dramatically towards the prestige form.Key Definition: Hypercorrection occurs when speakers — characteristically lower-middle-class — overshoot, producing a prestige feature even more frequently than the highest-status group in their most self-conscious speech, in an effort to match (and surpass) higher-status norms.
Labov interpreted this as evidence of linguistic insecurity: the lower-middle class is acutely aware of prestige norms and over-applies them when monitoring speech. The study's enduring importance is its demonstration that variation is not random but is structured by both social class and the level of attention a speaker pays to their own speech (style).
Key Definition: Linguistic insecurity is a speaker's anxiety that their own usage is "incorrect" or low-status, leading them to over-correct towards prestige forms, especially under self-monitoring. It is most pronounced in the lower-middle class — close enough to the prestige norm to aspire to it, yet insecure about their command of it — and is the psychological engine behind hypercorrection. Its mirror image is the covert-prestige security of speakers who confidently maintain vernacular forms as a positive identity choice.
The New York study is also a methodological landmark. By engineering the same utterance ("fourth floor") in both a casual and a careful (emphatic) style from each speaker, Labov turned a messy social phenomenon into something close to a controlled experiment, isolating the effect of attention to speech. This elegance is worth crediting in an essay: it is why the study became foundational, not merely an incidental detail.
In an earlier study, Labov (1963) investigated the centralisation of the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ (as in "right" and "house") among speakers on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He found that fishermen — particularly those who identified strongly with the island's traditional way of life and resented the influx of summer tourists — centralised these vowels more, while islanders oriented towards the mainland centralised less.
This was groundbreaking because it showed that phonological variation can be a marker of identity and group allegiance, not merely a response to overt prestige. Speakers were unconsciously using pronunciation to signal "I belong here," demonstrating that local solidarity can drive speakers away from incoming standard norms — an early glimpse of what Trudgill would later term covert prestige.
Peter Trudgill (1974), in The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich, examined several variables, notably:
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