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What is the relationship between social class, language and power?
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Language and Power
In this course, Professor Emma Moore (University of Sheffield) thinks about the relationship between language and power. In the first module, we think about the relationship between social class, language and power, focusing in particular on the persistence of local dialects in Britain, before turning in the second module to consider whether the use of these local dialects ought to be discouraged. In the three modules that follow, we explore how power is reflected the sounds, words, and structure of language, before turning in the sixth and final module to consider how power is reflected at the discourse level of language – in the words we use to categorise certain groups of people (e.g. BAME), in our use of presupposition, and in our use of metaphor.
General selected reading:
– L. Boroditsky, L. Schmidt and W. Phillips, 'Sex, syntax and semantics', in D. Gentner and S. Goldin-Meadows (eds.), Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought (2003)
– P. Eckert, Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity at Belten High (2000)
– S. King, 'From African American Vernacular English to African American Language: Rethinking the Study of Race and Language in African Americans’ Speech',Annual Review of Linguistics 6 (2020), pp. 285–300
– M. Macaulay and C. Brice, 'Don’t Touch My Projectile: Gender Bias and Stereotyping in Syntactic Examples', Language 73(4) (1997), pp. 798–825
– G. MacRuairc, 'They’re my words – I’ll talk how I like! Examining social class and linguistic practice among primary-school children', Language and Education 25(6) (2011), pp. 535–559
– E. Moore, 'The social life of style', Language and Literature 21(1) (2012), pp. 66–83
– E. Moore and S. Spencer, '“It just sounds proper common”: Exploring the social meanings expressed by nonstandard grammar', Linguistics and Education 63 (2021)
– R. J. Podesva, J. Jamsu and P. Callier, 'Constraints on the social meaning of released /t/: A production and perception study of US politicians', Language Variation and Change 27(1) (2015), pp. 59–87
– D. Reay, Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes (2017)
– D. Sharma, 'Style dominance: Attention, audience, and the ‘real me.’', Language in Society 47(01) (2018), pp. 1–31
– J. Snell and R. Andrews, 'To what extent does a regional dialect and accent impact on the development of reading and writing skills?' Cambridge Journal of Education 47(3) (2017), pp. 297–313
Websites:
– Accent Bias Britain
– BBC News (2016), Language plea by Sacred Heart School, Middlesbrough
– L. Cumiskey (2020), Prince George 'has picked up the Estuary accent of Ricky Gervais and Jamie Oliver'
– J. Curtis (2016), 'Shut up! Geezer who runs Essex school is like 'pupils must stop speaking as if they were in Towie':
– A. Davies (2021), 'Steph McGovern admits being judged for accent while at BBC ‘All anyone went on about’'
– Department of Linguistics, QMUL, Linguistics Research Digest:
– J. Gilmore, FixedIt
– B. Schmidt, Gendered Language' in Teacher Reviews:
– J. Shepherd (2012), 'Hiya pupils, please avoid slang, ta'
– J. Snell (2013), 'Saying no to 'gizit' is plain prejudice':
– V. L. Valentine (2019), 'Public Editor: Alexandra Bell highlights bias in the news and rewrites racist headlines'
What is the relationship between social class, language and power?
In this module, we think about the relationship between social class, language and power, focusing in particular on: (i) how we define working and middle class, and how we measure social class; (ii) the impact of the kind of language we hear (language input) on the way we ourselves speak; (iii) the types of language that people acquire; (iv) the perception of local dialects compared to standard English, and the reason that perceptions differ; (v) the reasons that local dialects persist despite the prevalence of negative perceptions; and (vi) the means by which we can counter negative views about local dialects.
Hello. My name is Professor anymore,
00:00:06and I work at the University of
00:00:08Sheffield in the English language linguistics Department.
00:00:10Now, like our linguist,
00:00:13I'm interested in language and how language is structured
00:00:14and also how language exists in the world.
00:00:18And that's the bit I'm particularly interested in.
00:00:20So as a socio linguist,
00:00:22I'm interested in how language varies according to different social factors,
00:00:24things like our social background but also things like education.
00:00:28Uh, race, gender or ethnicity
00:00:34Now in this module will be thinking about
00:00:38the relationship between language and power particularly,
00:00:40and examining how our social background makes
00:00:43us have relatively more or less power,
00:00:45and particularly how that interacts with the type of language that we use.
00:00:48Now.
00:00:51Language can be a really useful tool in thinking about these power relations,
00:00:52and there are two main ways in which this happens.
00:00:56So, firstly,
00:00:58different ways of speaking can be linked to different social qualities,
00:00:59and we can be assigned different levels of power dependent upon where we sit
00:01:04within that social hierarchy and where our
00:01:08language sits within that hierarchy as well.
00:01:11But secondly, people can also use language to put us in our place So that is to say,
00:01:13how were spoken about or written about can reveal what people think
00:01:18about us and the way in which they imagine as individuals.
00:01:22And sometimes it is really obvious.
00:01:26So if someone calls me an idiot, then it's very clear what they think about me.
00:01:28But often,
00:01:32the way that we think about people is much more
00:01:33subtly communicated than in that kind of direct way.
00:01:35So it requires us to do a little bit of decoding.
00:01:38And that's what linguists are really good at.
00:01:41So, for instance,
00:01:43I once had a cold call where somebody found
00:01:44our home and asked to speak to professor more.
00:01:47And when I said speaking, the colour replied, Oh,
00:01:49I wasn't expecting a woman now there.
00:01:53What we've got is something called priest opposition.
00:01:55So what that Speaker was doing in their mind they were expecting me to be a woman.
00:01:57And when my voice revealed that I wasn't a woman,
00:02:02that demonstrated that power differential between me and the speaker,
00:02:05and how the speaker perceived me
00:02:10and that notion of presupposition having ideas or beliefs about language
00:02:11is something we'll think about a bit more in this module
00:02:15So we're going to look at different ways in which power manifest.
00:02:18Firstly,
00:02:21we're going to start thinking about the relationship between social class,
00:02:22language and power.
00:02:25Then we're going to think about.
00:02:26If some forms of language have different values in relation to power,
00:02:27then are they more useful than others?
00:02:31Will then move on to think about how power
00:02:33is reflected in certain parts of the language.
00:02:36So language is structured in different ways around sounds,
00:02:38words and grammatical items.
00:02:41So we'll think about those individually.
00:02:42And then finally, we'll think about how power is embedded in discourse.
00:02:44So this will enable us to think a
00:02:48little bit more about things like priests opposition
00:02:50that I've talked about but also other types
00:02:52of decoding that we might do with language.
00:02:54So starting with this idea of what the relationship is between social class,
00:02:57language and power, years of social linguistics work.
00:03:01And as I said, I'm a socio linguists.
00:03:04Those socio linguists particularly look at
00:03:06the relationship between language and power.
00:03:08What they have found is that the lower people are down the socio economic hierarchy,
00:03:10the more likely they are to speak with a local dialect.
00:03:14What might otherwise be known as a non standard form of English,
00:03:17and working class people in particular,
00:03:22are much more likely to have that kind of local dialect, the middle class people.
00:03:24So just to think about how we might
00:03:28think about defining working class and middle class,
00:03:30so working class essentially refers to people who tend to be in low paid work.
00:03:32But it's not necessarily a reflection of intellect or any other value,
00:03:36whereas middle class people who have a considered
00:03:39to be professionals or to be socially elite
00:03:43and class is usually measured in terms of those economic factors.
00:03:46But they can also include things like education, income,
00:03:50housing but also things that are perhaps less easy to modify.
00:03:55So taste of fashion. So what kind of closed up people wear?
00:03:59What kind of events do they engage in, and particularly what practises do they have?
00:04:04And by practising, I mean what people do and how they do it. So, for instance,
00:04:07do you go to the theatre, or do you just spend most of your weekends at the pub?
00:04:11Do you go to the opera? Do you go to the football?
00:04:15All of those things can be tied up in how we think about class.
00:04:17So working class and middle class people speak differently because our
00:04:21place in society gives us access to different forms of language.
00:04:24And we acquire language by language input so that the things that we hear around us
00:04:28and obviously if we come from a working class community,
00:04:34our environment is going to be quite different than
00:04:36somebody who comes from a middle class community.
00:04:38Particularly we have different sorts of housing, different neighbourhoods,
00:04:41different activities going on around us.
00:04:44But the key thing about languages, however we acquire it,
00:04:47it enables us to communicate information.
00:04:49So if I take a sentence like she said, that's really good.
00:04:52Where I'm telling you potentially about my friend. Let's call her Claire.
00:04:56That's just told me something.
00:04:59Then I'm reporting that Clare thinks that thing is particularly good.
00:05:01But language also enables us to communicate our social concerns as well.
00:05:05So what I choose to communicate tells you something about what's important to me.
00:05:09So the fact that I'm telling you that Claire gave me this information tells you
00:05:14that I think there's something really key in
00:05:17what happened in that interaction with Claire.
00:05:19But also language can enable us to communicate our feelings as well.
00:05:22So compare, she said.
00:05:26That's really good with something a bit more like she's like, That's right, Good.
00:05:28Okay. Both of those things contain the same referential information.
00:05:32They tell you that both both the same things about Claire.
00:05:37But the way in which they're expressed tells you something slightly differently.
00:05:39It might. As you heard those two differences, you might have been thinking.
00:05:43One sounded more relaxed. One sounded more engaged, one sound more friendly.
00:05:46And those kind of expressions of our social concerns happiness, our anger,
00:05:51our compassion are also really key in why language
00:05:56varies and why we might use different language variants.
00:05:59So if people have access to different forms of language,
00:06:03then they can use language to communicate
00:06:06these different social concerns and feelings.
00:06:08Now we might think about what types of language people acquire.
00:06:11So in Britain,
00:06:14language variation tends to be on the spectrum that correlates with class.
00:06:16So we have at the one end people who speak very strong and broad local dialects,
00:06:19and at the other hand, we have people who speak standard English
00:06:24and standard English is that variety of
00:06:28English that's considered to be regionalist.
00:06:29It's the one that's encouraged at school,
00:06:32and it's the one that's most typically used in formal situations
00:06:34and language.
00:06:38Varieties have different language values assigned to them and as the most
00:06:39prestigious variety standard.
00:06:43English is considered too often to be more correct
00:06:45than local dialects and more useful than local dialects.
00:06:48On the other hand,
00:06:51local dialects can often be viewed
00:06:52negatively in comparison with standard English.
00:06:53So and again. This is to do the structure of society.
00:06:57So if we think about who's right at the top of British society,
00:06:59we've got quite literally royalty in the queen,
00:07:03and it's no accident that standard English will
00:07:06often be referred to as the Queen's English,
00:07:08then the people at the bottom.
00:07:11We've got the people who've got the least power playing Paris into the top,
00:07:12but of course they're the biggest group,
00:07:17so these are people who have really important roles in things like construction,
00:07:19farming, service industries.
00:07:23But because they're at the bottom,
00:07:24them and their speech are perceived less positively,
00:07:26and then we've got the people in the middle who
00:07:29tend to have inherited wealth and working things like law,
00:07:30medicine and science.
00:07:33Now, if you think about whose views get the most air time,
00:07:35then we tend to hear more negative things about local dialects than we do about
00:07:38the dialects of the speech of the people at the top of the social hierarchy.
00:07:42So recently. For instance, in October 2020 there was a headline that said,
00:07:45Prince George was speaking extra English and this
00:07:50was presented to something that was very negative.
00:07:53And of course,
00:07:55this is an heir to the throne that's
00:07:56been associated with a variety of English history.
00:07:57English, which is seen to derive from a combination of cock me
00:08:00and something like RPC received pronunciation,
00:08:04the most standard form of accident we might think about.
00:08:06That's something that's not seen to be suitable for that particular individual.
00:08:09Similarly,
00:08:13in June 2021 Steph McGovern was in the news talking about when she worked at the BBC.
00:08:14She was often criticised on her dialect,
00:08:20which she's got a very strong north east dialect.
00:08:24So the impact of these negative views is that it can become
00:08:28quite how to avoid them because they're popular there in the media.
00:08:31They're circulating
00:08:34and even if your experience of a local dialect tells you different,
00:08:35so even if you know that you value the way that you speak,
00:08:39you value the people around you.
00:08:43It can be hard to move yourself away from these ideas, and consequently,
00:08:44you can start to feel inarticulate about the way that you speak.
00:08:49If you speak with the local dialect and if you start to feel inarticulate,
00:08:52the consequences are you're probably going
00:08:55to become quite inarticulate as a consequence
00:08:57and then perceive that as a personal failing is, there's something wrong with you.
00:09:00But of course it's not about individuals.
00:09:05It's about the social structure and the values
00:09:06that we assigned to particular varieties of English.
00:09:08So if we think about why we have local dialects and why local dialects persist,
00:09:12why should they continue persist to persist in the face
00:09:17of this negativity about them relative to standard English?
00:09:20Well, of course, as we've seen,
00:09:23they can be perceived as something that's not just negative,
00:09:25but I'll say something that's friendly, trustworthy, honest and engaging.
00:09:28And that's because these types of dialects are transmitted in local communities,
00:09:33and what represents local communities are those kind of ideals.
00:09:37So the fact that people live closely with one another, they rely upon one another.
00:09:41And particularly there's a weaker financial situation.
00:09:45They might be more reliant on neighbours than they might be otherwise.
00:09:48So we have lots of working class communities, these very strong networks.
00:09:51And of course,
00:09:56what we've seen is that networks tend to maintain local language farms.
00:09:56So work, particularly by likely millwright in the 19 eighties,
00:10:01showed that working class communities can have dense networks.
00:10:04So lots of people are closely connected to one another.
00:10:08They can be multiplex, so that means that, for instance,
00:10:11you might have a network where you work with a group of people.
00:10:14But then those people might also be your neighbours,
00:10:18so you're into network situations with them,
00:10:20and they can also have very strong ties.
00:10:22So people tend to reciprocally, um, have a relationship with one another.
00:10:24So these characteristics, being a collective being engaged with one another,
00:10:31having strong social connections,
00:10:34can carry over into the local dialect themselves,
00:10:36and we can see this in the media to.
00:10:39So if we think, for instance, about TV personalities with local dialects,
00:10:41particularly recently on CBS, the chilled channel.
00:10:45We've got people like Sharon Flynn and Lee Hinchcliffe both.
00:10:49You've got quite strong regional accents,
00:10:53and there's no doubt that those accents are helping
00:10:55those presenters to present the sort of fun,
00:10:58friendly, engaging personalities that CBBC are looking for.
00:11:01So if we think about what the functions of local dialects are,
00:11:06then they have these functions to do with identity and connectivity.
00:11:09But they can also be very creative and expressive in how people use language as well.
00:11:13And we find people switching between the most broad local dialects
00:11:18and other forms in order to represent these different shifts.
00:11:22So if you want to think about how
00:11:26we might counter negative views about local dialects,
00:11:27then the the important thing to remember is that the problem with
00:11:30dialects is a perceptual problem rather than a problem with communication.
00:11:34So we can understand people perfectly well with regional dialects.
00:11:38But what's wrong is that people are judging them based on
00:11:41the dialect rather than on the content of their talk.
00:11:44And there's something wrong with a society that evaluates people based on their
00:11:46dialect and not on the basis of their accomplishments or the societal contribution
00:11:49and of course language variation affects all of us as I'm
00:11:54going to show a little bit more later in the module,
00:11:56irrespective of the precise variety that we use.
00:11:59And, of course,
00:12:02we've got this idea that local dialects do more than just communicate information.
00:12:03They've also communicating connectivity and identity and expressivity.
00:12:07So power structures in society can mean that
00:12:11the utility of language variation is underestimated.
00:12:14We need to reflect on where we're standing,
00:12:16what we're perceiving and how we're perceiving it and how
00:12:19that might reflect our own views on local dialect,
00:12:21but also on language variation more generally.
00:12:24
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Moore, E. (2022, May 03). Language and Power - What is the relationship between social class, language and power? [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/language-and-power-moore/how-is-power-reflected-in-the-lexis-of-language
MLA style
Moore, E. "Language and Power – What is the relationship between social class, language and power?." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 03 May 2022, https://massolit.io/courses/language-and-power-moore/how-is-power-reflected-in-the-lexis-of-language