Paul Roberts highlights features that form speech communities such as age, geography, education, occupation, and social position. Differences in thsese features lead to language variation. Then, Roberts considers social class to be the great shaper of speech communities. Similarly, Macaulay points out to the fact that students from upper-class communities are more likely to do better in tests, to be successful in their jobs, and to be more intelligent.
I was wondering why social position has such a crucial impact on our performance even though we study - generally speaking - in the same educational institutions. Don't you think that in a way or another intelligence is inherited, at least partly? Or is it the way of growing up children that has the significant impact?
My second question: To what extent are we able to correctly guess a speaker's social background? And what are our conclusions based on?
Comments (1)
I think that in lower level education, for the most part, everyone is in an equal educational institution. Still, once children reach a certain age they will be faced with the option of advanced classes. This is where educational institutions begin to change. If ones parents do not have a college education (likely lower social class) then that child may not have been subjected to the same enviornment of knowledge; and therefore will likely not be accepted in the upper level classes. These children are at a disadvantage and will likely never receive the same opporitunites as those children whose parents are highly educated. Another scenario might be a family in which the children are expected to take over the family business someday and for that reason drop out of school as earlier as possible. In either of these cases the child will likely not develop the same vocabulary and verbal proficiency, and therefore be at a disadvantage. It would be naive of us to assume everyone has an equal ooportunity to be exposed to socially acceptable language habits, regardless of social class. I believe social class has a significant impact on how someone learns to speak.
Posted by Pete Obourn | March 1, 2008 2:19 AM
Posted on March 1, 2008 02:19