Language, Society and Power, Annabelle Mooney, Sintesi del corso di Linguistica Inglese

Scarica Language, Society and Power, Annabelle Mooney e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity! LANGUAGE, SOCIETY and POWER CHAPTER 1: What is language? Linguists have always treated language as a system: some of them describe the rules of words order (syntax), phonetic and morphology; others describes what language tells us about people as individuals, as member of groups and how people interact. Why study language? According to F. De Saussure, the founder of modern linguistics, all people are in a way linguists as in the lives of individuals and societies speech is more important than anything else to understand each other. This is also supported by Norman Fairclough: he argues that the ability to understand the function of language is crucial to understand other people and society. Of course language can be analysed in a variety of ways and for specific purposes. These areas are not completely separated (e.g. we can analyse the brain process to find better ways to teach language = applying psycholinguistics to applied linguistics): 1. Semantic: looks at how we understand and construct meaning 2. Psycholinguistics: how our brain understand and process language 3. Applied linguistics: how we learn and teach language 4. Sociolinguistics: how social factors (age, social class, ethnicity…) affect the use of language 5. Artificial intelligence: how it might be possible to have conversation with computers 6. Stylistics: e.g. difference between literature and poetry 7. Anthropology: how people in different culture use language to do things 8. Philosophy: relationship between words, meaning and the real world 9. Forensic linguistics: whether someone is guilty of a criminal offence Language: a system Language is a rule-governed system. However, these rules let language change: they're like 'building codes' which tell the users of a certain language how to put together its parts. (ex with a word that doesn't exist such as 'mert') At the same time we know that certain words cannot be part of the English language system and this is due to particular rules established by phonetics, syntax and morphology. In that way Theoretical linguistics try to discover these rules for particular languages, grouping them according to certain structural criteria. There are other system of communication that have rules too, such as sign language or traffic signals. But they are very limited in communication because they sometimes vary from a place to another. In language it is possible to create new meanings. Linguists don't build up rules and make everyone follow them. Rather, they examine them to discover what building codes are: this is why linguistics is descriptive. The set of the building codes that need to be followed in order to form correct utterances in a certain language is called grammar. The theoretical linguist Noam Chomsky made an important distinction (referred to the use of grammar) between competence and performance. Competence means to have knowledge of the grammar, while performance refers to the way speakers actually use language and it does not always reflect the rules described by competence. It is possible for a well-formed utterance to be inappropriate because of rules of social relationships, taboo or other cultural conventions. This means that one can have grammatical competence, but could lack of communicative competence (aka sociolinguistic competence). Sociolinguistics looks at the variations we find among speakers in their linguistic performance in order to understand the different forms of communicative competence. The variation observed is systematic (it follows rules) as it is always motivated by reasons or factors. A system with variation There is not only one form of a language. There is a standard form but this isn't the only one possible. There are differences in the way people pronounce words (accents), in what words means (vocabulary) and in how words are positioned in a sentence (syntax). We can talk about features belonging to dialects or varieties (to use this term is better because sometimes the term 'dialect' is used in a pejorative way, as subordinated to the standard variety). How decisions are taken about what is correct or standard is very often related to power. (ex British English is perceived as the most correct variety since it is the 'original' and all the other Englishes ar just spin-offs) The potential to create new meanings To create new words is essential. For example, when new object are made, we need to know how to call them. In deciding this we can: 1. follow the rules about how to construct new words in the language we are using 2. use existing words in a new way (but using these terms in specific sentences can change the meaning completely) 3. create new words by changing their functions (e.g. by changing them from a verb to a noun etc..) (ex. Because page 6) what is fascinating about new words is that most of the time we understand them without looking them up into a dictionary where possibly we will not find them because they are so new. Many people believe that since you can't find a word in the dictionary, it is not legitimate. However, the entry in a dictionary is not evidence of a new word's legitimacy. Dictionaries are descriptive but they are conservative too and so they tend to include new meanings of words only when they have demonstrated some longevity. Prescription vs Description: Linguists do not judge the use of words as correct or incorrect, they just describe how the meaning of words alter if used in different contexts. Here is the difference between: Prescription: asserts that certain uses are incorrect according to rules for proper language use; Description: what people do with language. Usually prescriptive rules do not change but their usage do. Nevertheless prescriptivists think that language has particular rules to be followed. Those who break the rules will lead to breaking the language itself. Disapproving some people usage of language, in relation to grammar and meaning of words, is called ‘complaint tradition’. For linguists, instead, changes are inevitable and interesting as old prescriptive rules may no longer work so new ones can be found. In spite of changes, language remains systematic: that means changes are always linked to the building codes. ex. Standard English is a tricky term: 'standard' is defined by speech communities and not linguists; therefore, 'standard' refers to many varieties that speakers believe to be correct. Rules for language use are dictated and maintained by members of the higher groups of society. They have the power to sanction members of the speech community for not following the rules: these sanctions could be poor marks in school, failed jobs interviews and so on. Also descriptivists could perceive something as incorrect: if a sentence doesn't conform to the building codes, it can't communicate a clear message and so it can't be perceived in any way as correct. Language: multiple functions In his schema, Roman Jackobson describes all the features we need to take into consideration when we talk about a 'message': 1. contact: medium of communication that could be written, verbal or visual; 2. code: could be words or signals and both addresser and addressee have to be familiar with; 3. message: itself sent and received; 4. context: social and linguistic environment; 5. addresser: the person who is speaking; 6. addressee: the person being spoken to. Each of these factors determines a different function of language: 1. emotive function: is the expression of the speaker’s attitude toward the content; 2. referential function: is information, or denotative function of language; 3. conative function: is related to the addressee, using imperatives or vocatives; 4. phatic function: its purpose is not to communicate information, but rather to communicate (small talks); 5. poetic function: draws attention to the message for its own sake; 6. metalingual: is language referred to language; this function is vital for successful communication; 7. *N.B. Conative function is different from Connotation = subjective or personal aspect of meaning, which contrast with denotation, which is the literary definition. While denotation is related to the referential function, connotation is related to the emotive function. Power There are different ways in which power can be exercised through language. Small variation in language can bring benefits to speakers (ex British English speakers seen as polite). Generally, the speakers who speak the standard language gain benefits from it and so they have a degree of power but it is not the case that they as individuals are controlling others: it means that having competence in a prestigious language has benefits itself. ex. president of Turkmenistan exercising power over language (page 14) When a manager uses a particular form of language the power comes both from his position and from the king of language used. This is called symbolic power. Ideology In everyday contexts ideology is something negative or marked. But the ideology is simply a way of describing beliefs and behaviours that are thought as natural. In this common sense, the natural and normal way of thinking and acting is due to hegemonic ideology. Moreover ideology have another purpose: ideologies tend to present as universal interests, shared by the group as a whole as every group has its own ideology. Linguists Gunther Kress and Robert Hodge define ideology ‘as systematic body of ideas, organised from a particular point of view’. So we tend to talk about ideology when we want to draw attention to their power or to label another group’s values. In fact power, especially symbolic power, is usually supported by ideologies. Interpellation As said before language has a conative function that is directed to the addressee. In that way language is linked to power as it means that language is used to place people in some way. This positioning is called by Luis Althusser interpellation. We can also be positioned by ideology, thanks to the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) which comprises institutions that perpetuate the same ideological values of government such as the media or educational institutions. CHAPTER 3: Language and politics Politics is a wide topic: in this context we mean the process by which members of a community discuss and decide about how they are governed. This discussions are obviously linked to power. Politics and ideology When it comes to politics, ideologies are usually connected with beliefs about the proper organisation of society. These beliefs are found to pattern among people in predictable ways (ex. Behaviours of left and right parties). Persuasive Strategies According to Aristotele, persuasion can take place in at least 3 ways: -logos: the argument itself; -pathos: the emotion connected to an idea; -ethos: we trust the idea because we trust the speaker. Political persuasion, as all forms of persuasion, relies on all three tactics. Three parts lists are very common in persuasive texts: they have a pleasant rhythm and as such are easy to remember. Having the same syntactic structure across clauses close to each other is not unique to three part lists: it's also a feature of parallelism: indeed, a three part list is a particular form of parallelism. The most common form of parallelism is repetition since if we want to emphasize something, we repeat it. Parallelism is the use of two sentences placed next to each other that have very similar syntactic structure. It means that we understand them in relation to each other and, using this kind of parallelism, we create contrastive pairs. In politics this may suggest balance, by very often it emphasise the positive against the negative. Pronouns The use of pronouns, especially the first and second person, is common in persuasive speeches. In English it is not specified who 'we' are, so audience could be included (inclusive we) or exclude (exclusive we). 'You' is useful too since it doesn't distinguish between singular and plural. Metaphor and intertextuality Metaphors create connections of equivalence between two concepts that we do not usually consider related (x is y). Simile simply draws a comparison (x is like y). To understand metaphors a cultural background is needed (ex apart from bread we want roses). It is called intertextuality the strategy of drawing a metaphor on historical, cultural knowledge. Words and weapons Euphemism: is a word used to make something that otherwise might be unpleasant more benign. This is related to taboo areas such as death, so it seeks to background negative aspects and highlight positive ones Dysphemism: is the opposite. It makes something more disagreeable or unpleasant than it might be. Euphemisms are very common in the domains of war, as to talk about nuclear weapons (Nukespeak): defence policy is a field full of abstract and euphemisms because they allow to talk about nuclear war without forcing the speaker or enable the speaker to touch the reality behind those words (such as 'footprint' or 'cookie cutter'). This language gives its users a sense of power and make single actions more acceptable. Toys and ideology Who we are is dictated by dominants ideologies and we can find those ideologies everywhere, even in children toys: toys related to war have prepared children for specific kinds of warfare, with specific ideologies about the meaning of war and society itself. The way children hold guns demonstrates familiarity with those tools: they know what guns are for, who soldiers are and what they do. By interacting with these gun toys, children learn to identify with soldiers, seeing them as a representation of their own nation and society. They identify an enemy in a generic way (bad people) and this allows then any group or nation to be insert into this role. That particular view of war become part of the children's mental furniture and this has consequences over and above the identification of us and them. Extending metaphor Metaphors are a common part of language. They evoke casual relationships and invite evaluation: those elements are part of persuasive and political language. Student ad customer Students are now described as customers as higher education is becoming part of the market economy. This metaphor implies some beliefs (the customer is always right, services provided are dictated by market demand, ecc). Some of those demonstrate that university can't be compared to an economic transaction: it would be like students are buying their degrees. Silly citizenship Discussions of ideology and war, nuclear weapons and the cost of education may suggest that we are politically powerless. CHAPTER 4: Language and The Media Media: includes television, radio and the press, which are traditionally called “mass media” as the same message can reach a mass of people. These entities can have a significant effect on how people understand the world. Manufacture of consent The language of news can provide important information about how power is created and exercised. Chomsky and Herman described how media functions, in both economical and ideological ways. They identified 5 filters that influence the representations produced: because of the way information is altered by these filters, the public agreement is not a real agreement, rather a manufactured consent. Those filters are: -Media ownership; -Advertising income; -Where the news come from; -How groups respond to stories; -Communism is avoided. Audience is unaware of these filters when reading or watching mass media. These filters present events in particular ways, in polarised views. We are only exposed to to the filtered representations, so they become part of our collective common sense and as such are ideological. ex. Snowden case, or some people for someone are terrorists, for other are freedom fighters. We could think this manufacturing is consciously planned by powerful people who stands behind the scenes, however the application of filters is an automatic process that occur without conscious intervention. This is how ideology works: it acts itself like a filter and removes anything that doesn't fit its values. The news may only be a partial representation of what actually happened, because it depends on the point of view of who is writing. Even one word can change people's understanding of an issue: lexical choices can bring with them a whole set of views. Semantic unity A text is more coherent if it has semantic unity. It is obtained by assigning some theme or topic to a discourse: it has to tell the same story rather than having competing views. The title given to a story evoke a number of values and implicit narrative structures: it evokes something that we already know, so it gives us a way to read and understand the story. In this sense, the headline gives the reader a sense of the shape and sense of the story. News values (Bell) This term explains what is relevant and 'newsworthy' for the people producing the news. This is complementing two of Chomsky's filters: where stories come from and how we respond to them. However, the news values are less general: -negativity -recency -proximity -consonance -unambiguity -unexpectedness -superlativeness -relevance -personalisation -eliteness -attribution -facticity These values help us understand why stories are chosen and which people become the focus of these stories. These stories could be hard or soft news and they could be fast or slow news. Hard news is the basic product: accidents, conflicts, crimes, etc. Soft news rely on personalisation, eliteness, consonance, superlativeness and attribution. Fast news refers to news that need to be reported quickly, but they will probably be out of date as quickly. Slow news refers to event that develop over a longer period of time. Fast and slow news are not mutually exclusive (ex. Voting results in the election). Experts and news Media can play a role in creating what is true (facticity). ex. vaccination page 74 An important issue is not the choice of which experts are spoken to, interviewed or reported, but how experts are positioned in relation to one another. News online Internet brought some radical changes in the news spreading. We can see 6 ways in which these changes can be understood in contrast to previous forms of mass media. -the internet allows hypermedia, ie the integration of different channels of communication, such as written texts, pictures, motion pictures and sounds; -internet is more personal because of the small amount of labour now needed to produce different versions of the same story; -levels of interaction have been increased dramatically, as the forms of communication between producers and consumers: this has consequences for who counts as an expert; -the traditional life span of information in changing: people expect up to the minute updates about news; -mass media is now synchronous, ie the message is sent and immediately received; -the availability of media products is no longer subject to physical restrictions and the products are losing their fixity because their electronic publication format makes them susceptible to immediate modifications whenever they are received. While print journalism is mono-linear, news online can be published, edited and re-published again. So the news are now immediate, but also subject to change. The printed page doesn't change, once the newspaper goes to press, the content and format are fixed. Presenting news on the internet To show how news can be formed and evolve online we take as example two articles published by the same newspaper online in consecutive days. They report the story in different ways. However, the two articles have a lot in common: the content structure is similar, they use similar information. The first few paragraphs are very similar in structure and content. They are important in the structure of the article: news have an inverted pyramid structure, ei the most important part of the news is usually reported first. It is also due to reading habits as people may start to read a story, but they may not actually finish it. On the internet, the story structure is also related to the layout and the navigation tools available to the news producers. It can be determined by the kinds of advertising the publication uses and by the devices the audience may use to read the news. The layout of the newspapers is determined by the size of the paper they are printed on (ex large newspapers are usually folded so the most important news is usually placed above the fold). Online newspapers also have to provide navigation tools. This will include headings for different sections, search functions, short introductions to articles that enable the readers to click through to the full story. This means that the organisation of online news has to take account of the multimodal nature of the internet. With online news the line between producer and consumer is being eroded: consumers are now part of the process of news production. New ways of doing news (twitter and the citizen journalist) Twitter: founded in 2006, it is a micro-blogging application which allows individuals to author and disseminate messages of 140 characters called tweets. Hashtags are an essential feature of Twitter: they are used to identify the subject or orientation of tweets and enable users to find tweets about that topic. Events and television programmes also publicise hashtags so that people can follow and contribute to comment about them. Twitter is a platform that relies on users generated content, so its form and content depends on how people use it. Twitter enables more people to engage in citizen journalism. This term refers to non-professional journalists producing news content. In fact, Twitter and other platforms allow anyone with a smartphone access to the public sphere. But as Twitter is a public space and as we don't know the people tweeting, it can be very difficult to know how to interpret their contributions. However, even in the developed world, there is still a digital divide: not everyone has access to these technologies, as they require specific kinds of literacy. CHAPTER 6: Language and gender Sex: is the biological state of male and female; Gender: is socially constructed. A classic example is the use of colours, pink for girls – blue for boys. There are still many examples of everyday sexism and they can be easily find in language Inequality at the lexical level 1.MARKED TERMS There are a few differences between the terms referring to men and their equivalent for women. Ex difference between bachelor and spinster: common collocations for bachelor reflect a positive view of single life for men, while spinster is very unattractive and is likely associated with loneliness. This is an example of lexical asymmetry: terms that are meant to be referring to equivalent positions for women and men are not actually used in the same way. Another example is the use of marked terms referring to female figures. Terms referring to men are generally unmarked (actor) and considered neutral, while those referring to women are marked for sex (actress). This marking would not be problematic if it was not for the asymmetry: female occupation terms often have a negative connotation (master\mistress). Another example of asymmetry is found in titles: while there is just one available for men (Mr), women need to be identified in relation with their marital status (Miss, Mrs, Ms). This shows the importance society places on marriage for women. 2.GENERIC HE Sometimes the use of 'they' referring to women and men in the same situation would result in disagreement in terms of number ('every' and 'everyone' need the singular form). Prescriptivists argue that number agreement is more important than representing both sexes, so in that case we should use 'he'. However, 'he' is no longer the preferred pronoun to indicate singular forms, and 'they' is the most common and encouraged by guides on writing styles. 3.WORD ORDER Even the order of words can demonstrate gender inequality since it is far more common for the male term to be placed first. It does not occur in domains that are considered feminine, as parenting and children. The ordering of such words is linked to power: the conventional ordering, with men first and women second, may be an indication of women's less powerful position in the social hierarchy. 4.SEMANTIC DEROGATION It refers to the process by which a word comes to have a negative meaning over time, like 'spinster' and 'slut' (it used to mean dirty and untidy). In the domain of animals, terms acquire a negative connotation once associated with women. Very often in history one finds that an innocent term designating a girl may gradually acquire negative implications. Differences in language use Women's language is characterised by a number of features, such as the avoidance of swear words, the use of fillers (you know, sort of), the use of tag questions, empty adjectives, intensifiers, more standard syntax, high levels of politeness. Those features provide us an account of what people expect from women in their language use: society expects them to do so without questioning this expectation. TAG QUESTIONS The use of tag questions was interpreted as an expression of uncertainty and lack of confidence. However, tag questions have more than one function: they could have a modal or affective meaning. While women use more tag questions, they are more likely to be affective tags that facilitate the conversation. In contrast, the majority of tag questions used by men are modal, ie they express uncertainty. Gossip Gossip usually refers to talk about other people; it is usually considered meaningless and unreliable and sometimes malicious. Gossip is particularly associated with talk that women engage in with other women. However, this kind of talk allows women to explore and negotiate what it means to be a woman in different contexts. Gossip is found in men's talks to: women use to talk about people and feelings, while men are more likely to discuss things. Gossip features: -shared floor: more than one person talking at time; -back channelling or minimal responses: signals that participants are paying attention to the speaker; -hedging: using expressions such as 'I mean' as signal that the speaker knows it is a sensitive topic and he's trying to express respect for other speakers' points of view. Gossip and men Also men engage in gossip: theirs are usually talks with a 'masculine' subject, such as sports, but the features are very similar to women's talks. Young men discussions recorded for a research present two key features: discussion of non- present people in some detail and discussion of a topic of importance to the speaker. Features of men's talks Male talk is competitive, hierarchically organized and centred on 'impersonal' topics. Saying that male talks are competitive is linked to the observation that men prefer a one-at-a-time floor: holding the floor is in fact esteemed and there might be competition for it. Men are also said to signal they are listening by remaining silent. Men prefer topics such as cars, technology and sport: these topics are described as impersonal, but it may be that these topics are intensely personal for the men who talk about them. In men talks there is some simultaneous talk, but it is overlaps rather than interruptions. That means that there are no silences or breaks in the conversation. Gender and power The structure of gossip may be different from group to group, but its aim is the same: gossip is a way of exploring , negotiating and contesting social norms. Then why is gossip associated with girls only? The answer can be found in the androcentric rule: it says that anything women do linguistically will be negatively judged and anything men do with language will be seen as normal. This is because women's language is marked and men's isn't. The androcentric rule is part of a largest process of linguistic subordination. In fact, the speech of socially subordinate groups will be interpreted as linguistically inadequate by comparison with that of socially dominant groups. The fact that women talk more than men in just a belief. We need to consider the type of talk we're talking about, whether the talk takes place in the public or private domain, because these domains have different qualities. Public talk has the purpose of informing or persuading and it is often associated with higher status or power, while private talk has interpersonal functions such as making social connections, developing relationships, and so on. In the public contexts men talk more then women and the private sphere is not as highly valued as public talk. The belief that women talk too much is explained by the fact that any talk from women is considered 'too much', that women do not need to speak very much in order to be perceived as speaking too much. Performing gender identity DUDE Study on how young men in a fraternity use the world 'dude'. What is interesting is the relationship between speakers that this word invokes. Terms of address are an important way of expressing feelings about our relationship with the person we're talking to. The word 'dude' stresses a relationship of solidarity and camaraderie but in a nonchalant and not too enthusiastic manner. It is used to express friendship without being too affectionate. Social expectations for heterosexual men are such that they shouldn't express too much closeness in their friendships. Expressing solidarity among friends may be in conflict with those societal expectations, so 'dude' is a right compromise. Gender performances depend on social expectations about what appropriate performances of being a man or a woman look like. CHAPTER 7: Language and ethnicity How individuals articulate their ethnicity and how it is understood may vary because of the communicative context, the people they’re interacting with as well as other parts of their identity. Ethnicity Ethnicity has to do with a group of people sharing sociocultural characteristics, such as a place, ancestry, history, religion and often language. So in general ethnic refers to all social groups. However, dominant groups in terms of number or status do not define themselves as ethnic or as having a particular accent because they are unmarked and represent the norm. Basically we use ethnic and ethnicity to describe minority groups and as in the past ethnos was used to indicate the outsider of the nation this may explain the pejorative use that still exists today. Ethnicity, the nation state and multilingualism One of the most important boundaries in the modern world is that of the nation State. The relationship between nation, language and ethnicity is really important. There is a persistent idea that nations should be ethnically and linguistically homogeneous but this not always happens. Racism and representations of ethnicity Since minority ethnicities generally can't afford positions of power in the social hierarchy, the representations of these groups are not positive. Racist discourse is a form of discriminatory social practice that manifests itself in texts, talks and communication. There are two types of racist discourse: one directed at ethnically different 'others', and one about ethnically different 'others'. There are three further ways that people construct racist discourse about others: -difference: the other is not like us; -deviance: the other behaves in a way that we feel as amoral; -threat: the other is dangerous. Racist discourse is construct basically creating a contrast between us and them. Reclaiming terms Whether or not discourse can be racist depends on context, including who is speaking. A term may be racist when a person from the out-group uses it, but a positive identity marker when used by the group itself. Adolescence is a relatively new age group, born from the industrial society and the development of universal institutionalized secondary education. The main characteristic of adolescents is their liminal status: they've got some rights and some economic power, but not the same as adults. They are required to stay in education, follow specific rules of behaviour, dress and activity. This life stage is characterized by the transition from childhood to adulthood. This transition brings a number of obstacles: first, adolescents are given certain levels of autonomy and freedom to develop their own identity; second, adolescents are negotiating their marginalized status and it may include a purposeful divergence from adult norms. This divergence may take the form of words or phonological forms that are different from those of their parents. MULTIPLE NEGATION Research on students from a working class area of inner city Sidney and their use of multiple negation. It refers to the use of more than one negative morpheme or lexeme in an utterance. The older girls showed to decrease the use of this non-standard linguistic feature, while the boys didn't. These choices are related to the perception of what it means to be an adult woman or man in the society. LIKE AS A DISCOURSE MARKER People criticize this young people linguistic feature because in some cases it has become a tic, driving out the rest of vocabulary. However, it is neither random nor mindless: it functions as a marker of new information and focus. This use has its peak in the 15-16 years old group and decreases as adolescents grow up. Middle life stage Research has focused on this age group for some reasons: -it is seen as unmarked; -in this life stage, language use is stable and not expected to change; -as subject of research, adults are easier to access because they can give consent to participate and they do not have age-related cognitive or physical attributes that interfere with language research. Later life stage People in this life stage, as children and adolescents, are frequently depicted in a negative way and therefore reflects age-stereotyping in society. The terms and stereotypes associated with the elderly are not attractive: older people are perceived as incompetent, fragile, complaining, social unskilled, vulnerable to crime, etc. This doesn't mean they actually are like these, but this is the perception people have. As people are now living longer, with better health and quality of life than previous generations, new possibilities are available for older people. In this context, the effect of gender is important: the identities available for older men differs from those available for older women. It has generally been easier for older men to behave and be accepted, in ways that were not always thought to be appropriate for women (for example, in the way age gaps between heterosexual partners are perceived). Ex dating ads page 170. Elderspeak is the way people sometimes speak to the elderly: it is very similar to the speech addressed to children and it is the result of the stereotype that older people are cognitively impaired. It is a simplified speech, with a simplification of syntax and shorter utterances. It may be used to communicate care and affection, but it may also be heard as patronising or infantilising. Ageism is a discrimination based not on the age as such, but related to the expectations of age. Considering someone 'too young' or 'too old' is a result of ageism. CHAPTER 9: Language, class and symbolic capital Social class has long been associated with how much money a person has, as it places a person in a particular position in a social class hierarchy. However, the possession of money no longer relies on being born into a particular family or pursuing a particular profession. Wealth is now just one of the factors that contribute to the perception of class; other factors are education, where someone lives and the language a person speaks. Many people think that social class is no longer relevant. However, even in societies presenting as lacking social class distincions, it can still be found (ex Denmark, where distinctions are linked to linguistic performance). Attitudes to class The idea that there is a correct and standard form of the language is spread and it has consequences: any non- standard language variety will be viewed as deficient in relation to the standard. However, the valuation of standard language over all other varieties is an arbitrary one: this view of the standard language is not just held by a few people, but rather forms the basis of a widely held and powerful ideology. It is used to claim and maintain power, since language is the direct reflection of the groups by whom is spoken: the language spoken by a marginal group will also be marginalized, therefore those marginalized groups may be denied access to power because of the language they use. Linguistic accommodation: talking a non-standard language to a non-standard speaking audience although you're usually a standard speaker. This is a strategy used to perhaps gain some covert prestige or to reduce the perceived social distance between the speaker and the audience. This trick could be perceived as mockney as it demonstrates the negative view of the non-standard language, and as attitudes towards a group's language reflect attitudes towards the group itself. Ex UK chancellor spoke to a group of employees in a supermarket in Kent. Class as others Social class create social hierarchy in which 'others' occupy a low position. There are many terms to refer to those groups: 'bogan' in Australia, 'chav'' in UK, 'white trash' in the US. These terms index social class and a set of characteristics like clothing, behaviour and language. BOGANS Associated with crime, hard rock music, beer barns, old cars, cheap clothing such as truck suits and UGG boots. In the case someone labelled as bogan acquires a certain amount of wealth, they're still not considered middle class, but rather 'cashed up bogan'. This is a middle class strategy to protect their power and status. CHAVS This term refers to a young person who has a brash and loutish behaviour, usually associated to a low social status. Non-specialists define chav-speak with many features actually attributed to several marginalised varieties of English (this kind of point of view, coming from non-specialists, is called folk linguistics): the use of \v\ instead of \Θ\, the drop of h, glottal stops, avoid pronouncing \ing\. They've got specific vocabulary items, topics and a communicative style too. PITTSBURGHESE The stereotype of non-standard English can have positive functions too: US working class in Pittsburgh has linguistic features that seem to allow both positive and negative interpretations. The same features are in some situations considered uneducated, sloppy and linked to the working class, while in other situations are associated with the city's identity, local people pride and authenticity. Ex. one of the most famous feature is the second person plural pronoun 'yinz'. Standard English doesn't have such a pronoun, but some other varieties of English does ('y'all' in Southern England). 'Yinz' has been both stigmatized and positively embraced by local people to raise local pride. Linguistic variation NYC In the early 1960s the American sociolinguist William Labov conducted a survey on the relationship between social class and linguistic variation in NYC. Labov defined social stratification by the prestige of three department stores: Saks, Macy’s and Klein’s which prestige is due to independent factors such as location of the store, price of goods and in which papers are advertised. Labov assumed that by selecting the stores, customers would be socially stratified and reflect this stratification in their speech. He considered the presence or absence of pronounced ‘r’ in words such as ‘floor' (in NY the pronunciation of \r\ has high prestige, so the more prestige speakers have or borrow from their customers, the more rhoticity would be found in speech). He identified an item sold on the 4th floor and then asked clerks where he could find that item. The results suggest that rhoticity is socially stratified: it is used more by people associated with higher social class. Speakers in all three stores tend to increase the rate of ‘r’ pronunciation when repeating as they pay more attention to their speech, so in some cases salespeople 'borrow' prestige from the store in which they work. NORWICH Research on English pronunciations in Norwich considering the pronunciation of \ing\ at the end of a word. In formal English it is pronounced fully, in other varieties it is pronounced only with \n\. Results show a lot of style shifting (according to the situation) in the middle classes. This happens because of the 'borderline' position they have: they are more aware of the variety they speak and its social value. They are linguistically insecure, as they perceive that their own language is inferior to others. GLASGOW Rhoticity in UK is associated with a variety of non-standard Englishes, including Scottish English. However, in this case it is not stigmatised. Research on teenagers living in Glasgow from both working class and middle-class investigating rhoticity and \x\ ('ch' in loch). Tipically we find working class speakers using more non-standard linguistic features, but in this case working class teenagers do not use those two features. Working class teenagers are positioning themselves in opposition to the middle class teenagers, so what they perceive to be standard is the speech they hear from middle class peers. Working-class teenagers abandon rhoticity and \x\ not because they want to speak standard English, but because they want to disassociate from the middle class teenagers. Using these two sounds means to be posh, so they refuse them because they refuse posh people. LONDON Difference between posh and Cockney. Social Networks Social networks in this context does not refer to online communities people, rather relations among people in a community, interactions people have with one another. Social networks can be described in terms of density and plexity: density accounts for the number of other people they interact with, while plexity accounts for the different kinds of ties people have with others. Dense, multiplex social networks are more common in traditional working class neighbourhoods and compel conformity to local linguistic norms. Communities of practice A community of practice is a group of people who have a shared common goal or activity and they may develop their own linguistic norms. Those norms are not pre-determined, rather they evolve and are developed collaboratively by members of the group. Ex two main groups in high school: jocks and burnouts; jocks are focused on academic achievement, while burnouts are less interested in school and orient to urban culture. The two groups reflect class-based cultural norms, but they refine the extreme poles of social positions available in school, and the majority of students belong to neither group and refer to themselves as in-between. They investigate multiple negation and the differences between the two groups are evident. Symbolic capital It refers to intangible attributes a person can accumulate in order to establish or improve their position in a group, including society in general. Such attributes may include a degree from a well-regarded university, an uncle who is a judge, mastery of a prestigious language, etc. Men are usually identified by their profession, while women may be more likely to be judged by their appearance, including how they speak. Ex the male jocks and burnouts can establish their status through their activities, while female jocks and burnouts have to develop their image through symbolic means, such as clothes and language. That's why who engage the most extreme burnout behaviour are the girls named 'burned-out burnout' (they use double negation the most).