The manner in which any given individual may articulate themselves can play a vital role in how someone is accepted within and outside their socioeconomic status. There is a false assumption that there is a form of standard English that is superior to other forms of spoken English. The perception of an individual’s intelligence, social status, and overall credibility is dependent upon how fluently they can articulate themselves. This incorrect idea manifests itself within the schoolroom and among immigrant workers as linguistics is imbued in every individual’s lexicon.
There are many factors to consider when defining social status. Broadly, social status refers to the economic condition and accumulated wealth of an individual. This wealth manifests itself in the form of land, money, and possessions. Hand-in-hand with this broad definition is the idea of the power that an individual possesses, whether this power is limited to a single community unit or within a job position. In this paper, social status is defined not only as “wealth, power, and prestige” but also as “a pattern of alliances and acquaintances shaped by similarities and dissimilarities of wealth, power, and prestige” (Mirowsky and Ross 552). Social status is a combination of many critical factors that make up an individual’s everyday life.
This assumption that there is a correct form of speaking is not strictly limited to English in the United States. According to Ronald Macaulay, social stratification is nearly as universal as language and as diverse as language (36). Dean Ellis briefly discusses how dialect in other countries determines an individual’s social status. In Germany, “Hoch Deutsch” or high German is expected to be spoken amongst upper and middle-class Germans while “Platt Deutsch” is generally spoken amongst lower-class Germans (Ellis 431). Status has also been determined by a person’s ability to speak other languages fluently. In ancient Rome, a sign of knowledge was the ability to be bilingual in both Latin and Greek. In Russia, French was the language of the court, in “preference to their native language which they shared with the lower classes” (Ellis 431). Language establishes a barrier between different social classes.
There are several distinctions to be drawn between the differences between middle-class and working-class languages. Ronald Macaulay extensively outlines the idiosyncrasies of language in his book, Talk that Counts: Age, Gender, and Social Class Differences in Discourse. In one chapter, Macaulay notes the use of minimal responses such as uhuh, mhm, I know, right, no, and yeah/ yes which are used more frequently among middle-class speakers (46). Whether intentionally or unintentionally such phrases will slip into the middle-class person’s idiolect. Adverbs and adjectives also are vital aspects of middle-class vocabulary (Macaulay 113 & 123). Everything ends up determining social status, including private and public social interactions.
Typically, we view dialect and social district as definitive indicators of social class, as well as education level. It seems logical that the more education that a person acquires, their power of articulating themselves increases exponentially. However, according to Dean Ellis, “It seems logical to assume that the speech qualities which reveal social status are not a product of anything so simple as ‘amount of education’, but are rather a product of the speakers’ total environment” (435). Those that are from the socioeconomic ‘ghettos’ of society are more impaired socially than someone who grew up in the rural suburbs of a major city. The people that settle in these pockets are heavily influenced by the culture around them. According to scholars like Massey and Denton, as well as Wilson, these communities are the scapegoat for poor literary skills, unemployment, and epidemics (qtd. in Morgan 3). Although individuals may come from the same locality their lexicon may still be entirely different based solely on class.
The beginnings of this social stratification occur with early childhood education. While language comprehension of text is universally equal across all classes, language acquisition varies. The way a child reads and understands and interacts with the text depends upon the class they grew up in. Children are read to by their parents, and most parents will make queries to their children to engage them in the material to ensure that they are understanding it. Children of working-class parents are generally asked factually based questions as compared to middle-class children who are asked to review writing critically (Bloomquist 329). Middle-class students are believed to have a better understanding of the English language. Upper and middle-class children perform better on standardized testing as compared to their working-class peers and are perceived to be the smarter workers (Bloomquist 329). Middle-class learners are therefore perceived to be the model for standardized comprehension of language. According to Afia Kanwal and Wasima Shehzad., the role of childhood schooling and language proficiency skills creates trends in language inequality that, if addressed, can bridge the gap between status in schooling and higher education (180). Learning to speak according to standards hopes to bridge the difference in class status.
Certain steps have been taken to better assimilate different classes to the standard of middle-class and upper-class languages. There is “a societal insistence on furthering the primacy of middle-class linguistic structures and language behaviors” (Bloomquist 326). Just because middle and upper-class learners do better in a formal school setting does not mean that they are smarter. The difference is not based on knowledge of the lexicon or familiarity with standard English, but rather the “working-class children’s reluctance to perform linguistically by using the labels” used for specific objects (Bloomquist 330). However, what constitutes what is viewed as an appropriate label is a highly contested topic. It is a very delicate situation to state what is correct since each individual’s interpretation of correct English differs. There appears to be a bias towards middle-class standards largely because the vast majority of American speakers come from that social demographic.
Although fixing the educational system appears to be the answer to early childhood linguistic inequality, the issue is not easily rectified. Kanwal and Shehzad state that “University education is designed in a way to eradicate early differences in linguistic exposure through equal exposure of curriculum and pedagogy based on which it is expected” but the issue of inequality is still not addressed as it is apparent that there is still inequality on college campuses (187). Language is ingrained in the individual mindset and later adult learning experiences cannot alter it. A study from Dean Ellis identifies the difference in language in his research study, “Speech and Social Status in America”. The article gives the example of a linguistic exercise on campus which tested how college students expressed themselves; it said:
“It was assumed that since all of the speakers were college students, they could all use correct grammar and sophisticated sentence structures if they consciously attempted to. Later analysis of the speech samples proved this assumption to be only partially correct. The subjects all used proper grammar, but their choice of vocabulary, sentence length, sentence structure, and their fluency varied greatly” (Ellis 435).
As much as we would like to believe that education could branch the inequality of linguistic diction, this is not the case. No matter how much education an individual may have, they cannot escape the language that their socioeconomic status provided.
Speakers native to the United States have challenges identifying outside of the social status; however, non-native speakers are even more constrained. According to “Language Networks and Social Status among Mexican Americans” by John Mirowsky and Catherine Ross, “[h]igher status and assimilation are related in the United States” (552). In order to climb the social ladder of society, it is necessary to move within spheres of higher influence. This is a similar challenge to the educational gap between students of different economic statuses. Family connections, as well as native communities, can influence the status of bilingual or first-generational speakers.
The United States has seen exponential growth in its immigrant population as well as a rise in immigrant workers. According to one research study, “Mexican American’s language network is likely to have a significant impact on his or her socioeconomic position” (Mirowsky and Ross 552). Many immigrant workers are not accepted fully within their realm of work because they are not considered to be fully qualified. Their ability to work becomes gauged by their ability to articulate themselves effectively. Their accent serves as a meter for their overall abilities. Language becomes very challenging to gauge when considering the plight of immigrant workers.
A good percentage of the Latino-American population copes with the unequal perception of their socioeconomic status based on individualized groups. According to research from Mirowsky and Ross, the use of Spanish in the United States is a common and oftentimes neglected topic. According to research, nearly 50% of all Latinos in the United States speak Spanish more than English and of these, 10% are monolingual.[1] There is a large percentage of the population that dominantly speaks Spanish over English in the United States. For this reason, a majority of Spanish-English speakers will remain in spheres where both English and Spanish are spoken. According to Morgan in her book, Speech Communities, the separate subsets in which a person communicates play a critical role in the way individuals function in society. These ‘speech communities’ consistently share the same symbols whether it be in the same practices, beliefs, or the way they articulate ideas (Morgan 156). Non-native English speakers will generally remain in these subset groups.
Mirowsky and Ross detail the circumstances of the Mexican workers. They said that Mexican workers that work in lower-class neighborhoods have more contact with traditional Spanish speakers and do not feel the pull toward Anglo culture (553). These individuals are more apt to fraternize with those that share similar cultures and opinions to their own. Mirowsky and Ross say that “[s]ocioeconomic achievement moves Mexican Americans from Spanish-speaking to English- speaking networks, and thus from Mexican to Anglo” (553). The spheres of language influence therefore greatly impact non-native speakers. The conclusion that Mirowsky and Ross reach is that Mexican Americans’ language network has a significant impact on their socioeconomic position (552). The Mexican workers have a unique perspective that is different from the average American worker.
Both native and non-native speakers are still intrinsically tied to their status. According to Ellis, the manner of diction of individual words accurately determines social status. He says that the tonal qualities of the words determine class, even when individuals would attempt to fake a particular social status; this was prevalent whether it be upper or working class (434).
Although the diction may be correct, listeners are able to recognize the social-status cues in a person’s speech in spite of the speaker’s regional dialect (Ellis 432). In the end, social status and language come together full circle.
Language and socioeconomic status are intrinsically tied to one another. Although it would be nice to believe that education could alter an individual’s reception in society, there is evidence that the two factors are not separate from one another. Ultimately the manner in which one is raised as well as those that the individual associates with have the only bearing on how an individual speaks. There is no correct manner of speaking English, but there is a clear definitive stratification in which a person speaks. Generalizations about educational abilities or work ethic are unfounded, as the only truly telling aspect of the way an individual speaks is the circumstances they have come from.
Works Cited
Bloomquist, Jennifer. “Class and Categories: What Role Does Socioeconomic Status Play in Children’s Lexical and Conceptual Development?” Multillingua, vol. 28, no. 4, Oct. 2009, pp. 327-353. EBSCOhost doi:10.1515/mult.2009.015.
Ellis, Dean S. “Speech and Social Status in America.” Social Forces, vol. 45, no. 3, 1967, pp. 431–437. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2575202.
Kanwal, Afia, and Wasima Shehzad. “Effective Intervention across Socioeconomic Classes for Improvement in Language Outcomes.” Journal of Education and Training Studies 5.1 (2016): 179-189.
Macaulay, Ronald. Talk that Counts: Age, Gender, and Social Class Differences in Discourse. New York, Oxford University Press, 2005.
Mirowsky, John, and Catherine E. Ross. “Language Networks and Social Status among Mexican Americans.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 2, 1984, pp. 551–564. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42861661.
Morgan, Marcyliena. Speech Communities. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
[1] Material is quoted in Mirowsky and Ross: originally found in Lopez, David E. 1978. “Chicano Language Loyalty in an Urban Setting” Sociology and Social Research, 62, January, pp. 267-79.
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